Teaching baby chicks to eat and drink

April 1, 4:49 PMNashville Country Living ExaminerNicole Sauce

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Photo by Nicole Sauce

In the wild, the mother hen teaches her babies to eat and drink. Thus, it is up to the human caretaker to teach these important skills in captivity.

Baby chicks absorb the yoke into their bodies before hatching. The yoke has enough sustenance to keep the chick alive for 48-72 hours after breaking free. This is how the birds can be overnight mailed to a customer with a very low death rate.

That said, it is best to get the newborns familiar with eating and drinking as soon as possible to avoid stressing their systems.

First, teach the chick to drink:

• Choose a watering dish that is very shallow so the chick does not drown and also so it can reach the water.
• Pick up the baby chick.
• Dip its bill in the water.
• Put the chick down and observe. If it drinks on its own, it has learned. If it does not, repeat the process a little later.
• Rarely, the chick will not learn to drink. This is a fatal condition, though isolating the animal from the other birds while it learns sometimes works.

Next, teach the baby bird to eat:

• Place food in a shallow food dish and also scatter some around the floor of the brooder.
• The baby chicks, having learned to put things in their mouths by drinking, will become very interested in the strange looking stuff and pick at it.

Once these two skills are learned, baby chicks have the skills required to be healthy and grow.