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Feeder Chicks

Would you Buy feeder chicks?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 45.0%

  • No

    Votes: 3 15.0%

  • Rather feed mice

    Votes: 5 25.0%

  • They are inferior to mice.

    Votes: 3 15.0%
  • Total voters
    20
W

Wormman

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Does anyone buy feeder chicks? Who do you use and who is the best? If this should go in the BOI also let me know. I am looking for the best feeder chick company. Are they better than mice? Is there a market?
Ken Chiarella
 
Isn't buying them illegal? I mean yes, in a round about way (dinner and drinks etc) you pay for them but I don't think you can just go out and buy them (at least in California). Personally I prefer blondes, but as long as she knows which animals get which food I'm all for feeder chicks :)


Sorry, long week and I need a break :D
 
Right onnnnn...

Dan-- you took the words right out of my mouth! Could'nt have said it better myself! My wife probably wouldn't like it though, women, they just don't get it....

Bob
 
I had no idea. I am going to clean out my freezer now before I get raided! Anybody need a couple frozen blondes, three red heads, and a brunette? Overnight shipping might be a little high, and I will need some massive blocks of dry ice. I will trade you for a chipper, or cement mixer.
Ken Chiarella
 
Men and their games!

Y'all crack me up. Feeder chicks huh? Right then.

As far as the intended topic (I don't need to buy any chicks, studs now......hhhhmmmmmm, nevermind their easy to get for free and most of them are RATS anyway!)

Right then.....Really, I think mice or Rats would be easier as you can breed them yourself in a small area. If your buying them or have the space to keep chickens, I guess price would make the difference. If the chicks are cheaper, go for it, but mice or rats are easier to find and pretty cheap to buy frozen.
 
I like to feed mice to my snakes, and I save eating the chicks for me!

Whoops did I really type that.......

I have fed chicks to my Gopher Snakes before, they would also eat store bought chicken eggs, and seemed to prefer them cold in the summer. They realy loved an chick evry now and then - I only bought a few and would get them at a live poultry market. Pretty cheap. I think you can get em from large scale snake food suppliers.
 
What I've heard is that feeder chicks, if they're day-old chicks, don't have a lot of nutrtion, sort of like pinkie mice. I also remember something about their being high in fat due to the yolk sac. This is info I got while volunteering at a nature center where they fed the chicks to raptors. I got sick of the smell pretty quick, but the birds were very messy eaters and liked to leave the intestines on the ground. The first time I tried to hold a turkey vulture, he got agitated (they're very smart and he knew I was new) and hacked up a chick skull at me. :puke:
That's all I have to say about that.

Erin B.

P.S. they also fed the raptors mice, thus not making them hypocrites in regard to the above statement. I think they used the chicks mostly because they got them for free from this Amish farm that didn't need all the extra males. Maybe someone should look into it.
That's all I have to say about that.
 
There is a chicken farm here that donates chicks to one of the local nature centers I do occasional programs for. All they have to do is pick them up, and they get all they want. Of course the chicks are mainly used to feed their raptors, and not their snakes.

As far as selling or buying them on the internet, most of the large frozen feeder companies carry them. However, they tend to be higher in price than rats or mice of comparable sizes.
 
I've never fed chicks to anything. The only reason I would really consider doing so is if that was what was required to get the snake to feed. So far I haven't had this problem.

Everything I've ever read mentions chicken resulting in foul (fowl? :laugh: ) smelling feces. Something I'm just not itching to deal with.
I also see the possible risk of changing the dietary preference of the snake. If the snake eats rodents with no problems, I'm not going to start trying to expand his tastes. Some people have thought it was fun to feed a young rabbit to their ball python for Easter, only to discover that the snake afterwards held out for bunny.
 
My biggest worry, outside of the concerns Clay mentioned, is the higher incidence and more virulent strains of Salmonella and E-coli found in domestic poultry.

Sure, there are some strains of salmonella that are naturally occuring in some herps, but the strains carried by chickens are frequently much... much... MUCH nastier and could potentially sicken or even kill a herp which consumes an infected chicken.

Same goes for e-coli only more so, since it's not found anywhere near as frequently in the intestinal tract of reptiles.

When needing to get a stubborn feeder to eat something and rodents were refused... and the species would be naturally inclined to take birds rather than other herps... I've always felt more comfortable with hatchling button quail. The same potentials are there, but the breeding process seems less intense since the resale market is lower, the animals don't come into contact with their own feces to the same degree and never get a chance to build up those massive pathogen loads.

One question though... if anyone knows offhand... Can non-Psittacines get or carry psittacosis? If they can, what kind of infection rate is there in domesticated chickens?
 
Just the SMELL alone begs nooo

When i was keeping large burms & retics i had a person that had a large chicken farm and pig farm he would let a few of us set feezers on hi farm and he would give up any & all still born pigs/goats so he didnt have to pay to dispose of them .He also told me he wouldsell me male roosters for $.25 each i dont mean babieseither so i took home like $20 worth once and feed the burms & retics .. now if you have never seen a 16ft retic or burm push the feathers out of the disposal end .. let me tell you FOWL isnt the word i would stick to rodent and wabbits .... the chicks aint worth the odor andthe heaving in cleaning cages lol ... the baby pigs & goats now ... well that was another story ever seen them hoofs going down? lol
 
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