Freeholder
This too shall pass.
Here is a very useful book that I highly recommend for anyone raising baby chicks in brooders. (The one thing he doesn't address, or hasn't yet -- I'm about one-third of the way into the book -- is broody hens.) It's available on Kindle Unlimited, if you have that. Otherwise, you can buy an e-copy for about ten dollars, or a used paper copy for a couple of bucks plus shipping (so probably around $6 total).
We had the question come up a while back, either here or on another forum, about baby chicks pasting up. All I could say at the time was that I hadn't had much trouble with pasting up for years, and I wasn't really sure why. But this book may have given me the answer (or a couple of possible answers). He says,
"Sometimes chicks have trouble with 'paste-up,' where manure dries to their rear ends, giving a case of constipation that will sometimes kill them. Giving them a diet of chick scratch (mixed, finely cracked grains) for two days before giving them chick starter will generally prevent this. Paste-up is generally a symptom that it's too cold or too drafty under the brooder, and fixing this problem will do a lot more good than anything you can accomplish by changing the feed. But feeding scratch grains for the first two days is not harmful to the chicks. A compromise is to feed chick scratch on the floor [on trays] and chick starter in the feeders. The chicks like chick starter a lot better than they like scratch grains, so this ought to encourage them to learn to use the feeders."
Looking back, I think he's right. The times that we had a lot of trouble with pasting-up were when we were raising chicks in unheated sheds; they, of course, had their heat lamps, which we monitored closely and dropped lower if the chicks were huddling under them, but there were probably also some drafts. For quite a few years, though, I've been starting chicks in the house, sometimes keeping them in the house up to a month (way too long, but it depended on the weather outside, and on my health, whether I was up to taking care of chicks that weren't in the house and still needed to be tended several times a day). Usually they are in the house for a week or at most two weeks, but that gives them a pretty good start. So, if you are having trouble with pasted butts on your baby chicks, see if you can improve your brooding area to make it warmer and less drafty.
Kathleen
We had the question come up a while back, either here or on another forum, about baby chicks pasting up. All I could say at the time was that I hadn't had much trouble with pasting up for years, and I wasn't really sure why. But this book may have given me the answer (or a couple of possible answers). He says,
"Sometimes chicks have trouble with 'paste-up,' where manure dries to their rear ends, giving a case of constipation that will sometimes kill them. Giving them a diet of chick scratch (mixed, finely cracked grains) for two days before giving them chick starter will generally prevent this. Paste-up is generally a symptom that it's too cold or too drafty under the brooder, and fixing this problem will do a lot more good than anything you can accomplish by changing the feed. But feeding scratch grains for the first two days is not harmful to the chicks. A compromise is to feed chick scratch on the floor [on trays] and chick starter in the feeders. The chicks like chick starter a lot better than they like scratch grains, so this ought to encourage them to learn to use the feeders."
Looking back, I think he's right. The times that we had a lot of trouble with pasting-up were when we were raising chicks in unheated sheds; they, of course, had their heat lamps, which we monitored closely and dropped lower if the chicks were huddling under them, but there were probably also some drafts. For quite a few years, though, I've been starting chicks in the house, sometimes keeping them in the house up to a month (way too long, but it depended on the weather outside, and on my health, whether I was up to taking care of chicks that weren't in the house and still needed to be tended several times a day). Usually they are in the house for a week or at most two weeks, but that gives them a pretty good start. So, if you are having trouble with pasted butts on your baby chicks, see if you can improve your brooding area to make it warmer and less drafty.
Kathleen
Success With Baby Chicks: A Complete Guide to Hatchery Selection, Mail-Order Chicks, Day-Old Chick Care, Brooding, Brooder Plans, Feeding, and Housing - Kindle edition by Plamondon, Robert. Crafts, Hobbies & Home Kindle eBooks @ Amazon.com.
Success With Baby Chicks: A Complete Guide to Hatchery Selection, Mail-Order Chicks, Day-Old Chick Care, Brooding, Brooder Plans, Feeding, and Housing - Kindle edition by Plamondon, Robert. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks...
www.amazon.com
