Rural Gardening: Handling Chicks, 1 by Heavinscent

Heavinscent wrote:
We found that our baby peeps didn't like to be picked up... They would flap and peep like they we were going to kill them. Instead we would just sit in the pen with them so they got used to us. As they got older we would sprinkle crumbles on our legs so the would hop up and eat and we tried to keep our hands slow moving to pet them so they wouldn't freak out. Now when we go to visit them they almost fight over who gets to hop up in our lap first.
We keep purell zip tied to the pen and hit it before and after we visit just in case.
Like Hay said we didn't handle them for about a week other than to clean the brooder.