Keeping Baby Chicks Healthy

Reader Contribution by Pat Foreman
Published on August 11, 2014
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Brooding healthy, well-adjusted chicks is not just keeping them warm and fed. In my opinion, there are at least four pro-active things you can do to assure thriving chicks.

1. Healthy Chicks Come From Healthy Parents
If the rooster or hen was malnutrition chances are high their chicks will have nutritional deficiencies passed from the parents to the chick. Start right and get chicks (and hatching eggs) from producers who take good care of their breeding stock.

2. Protect and Enhance the Chicks Biome
My chicks get probiotics in their first feed so that their immune system is supported. I never feed medicated feed chicks. Medicated feed gives a sub-therapeutic dose of antibiotics that can alter the chick biome and contribute to bacterial drug resistance. I treat the individual; not the entire flock. Giving the chicks probiotics also helps prevent and treat pasty butt.

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