Cage Tour! (Part Two)

I've showed you the outside of the cage, but here is the inside and all the things that the chicks need to flourish and grow:

I will start off by showing you their little hut/shelter. It is a wooden Super Pet Woodland Get-Away. (No it is not a fire hazard, I've already checked. I also placed the heat lamp on the opposite side of the cage.) The chicks only come in here sometimes, they are mainly on the other side of the cage. This hut has both the new substrate, and the old substrate from when we first got them from the farm. The old substrate is only in this part of the cage to remind them of home, if they remember.

This is the substrate. We used a pine granule substrate. We were originally given wood shavings (I believe it was cedar, but I am not 100% sure on that) to use as a substrate (which we do have in the hut), but for the rest of the cage, we use this other kind of substrate. The one we used is as good, because its soft enough for the chicks feet (so it does not irritate their feet when they are walking all over it), but yet it is too hard for the chicks to eat (they can eat it, it wouldn't be harmful if they did, but it doesn't necessarily do anything for them nutritionally, so its better if they didn't).

This is the chick's water bowl. They use it, obviously, to drink water. Originally, this was used years and years ago for my desert tortoises when they were little. I think they are 9 currently, and now have an enclosure outside, as they are too big to be in a cage. We completely sterilized the water bowl, just in case, and used it for the chicks. Its too heavy for them to flip over, its not deep enough for them to drown, and it isn't small enough for them to get stuck in. Overall, I think this was a good choice of a water bowl for the chicks. This is kept in the front right corner of the cage, across from the food bowls.

Outside of the cage, we keep a water cup to continuously fill up their water. Between the two of them drinking so much, and the quicker evaporation process because of the heat lamp and the heater, I have to fill up their water quite often. I just used a random metal cup, because they say if you drink water out of a plastic cup, you will consume a lot of plastic particles that have come off of the cup itself. So, for precautionary reasons, I use this metal cup to fill up their water bowl.

These are the two food bowls that we use to feed our chicks. There are two for each chick, but usually they both eat out of the same one, trying to eat whichever thing that the other one is eating. The food bowls that we use are just two really cute little blue, plastic food bowls with a picture of a whale on them (non-visible in the picture). It doesn't really matter what type of food container you use to feed your chicks, as long as they can't flip it and get stuck underneath. Also, that they cannot eat the food bowl itself (i.e. if it was twine or something).

Last but not least, this is the food that the farm told us to feed the chicks. It is Purina Start and Grow Premium Brand Poultry Feed. Its medicated for the needs of baby chickens. Its all natural with natural plant proteins, has a strong start & brightly colored plumage, and it supports a healthy immune system. We got it at Mary's Tack and Feed, but it doesn't necessarily matter where you get it. I give the chicks about 2 or 3 handfuls of this in each bowl. (My hands are like really small though, so the amounts may differ).


This concludes the cage tour


Heres a link to another DIY Chicken Coop: http://youtu.be/PJxwCkOaL9E