How to Keep Your Chicks from Clogging Their Feed and Water Containers

Whether you’ve purchased chicks as babies or your chickens have hatched their eggs, you are surely aware that your baby chicks are active, hungry, and a true joy…

…but they also have their quirks and idiosyncrasies.

One quirk many new chicken parents struggle with is that their hungry and excited chicks tap dance in their feed, poo in their water and kick litter and other shavings into their food and water feeders, causing them to clog.

You might wonder why chicks do this. It’s not exactly sanitary and you would think they might prefer to eat and drink without any of their added ‘ingredients’, but perching, scratching and pecking is their main enjoyment – it’s just kind of what they do.

Although scratching is a natural behavior for chickens, there are a few ways you can keep them from constantly requiring you to unclog their feeders.

It may be possible to prop the containers up off the ground in some way or perhaps suspend them. While your chicks are small enough, you can use a hamster-watering container for their water and mount it on a pole or wall. As your chickens grow, you can put the nipples from the hamster bottle on a larger container. You can also suspend feeders and watering containers from the ceiling with a chain or rope and raise them higher off the ground as your chickens grow.

It is also possible to purchase feeders and waterers specifically made for chicks which make it harder for them to get up to their usual tricks, and this is perhaps the best way to go if you can.

A ‘normal’ bowl will obviously give them access to feed and water but make it easy for them dirty and also quite likely cause the area around them to become damp (also unsanitary). Whilst these can work you do have to be particularly careful with water in bowls, as apart from the constant spills there is also quite a strong potential for accidental drowning (marbles in the bottom of the bowl may help reduce that risk but ideally a chick proof waterer would be better).

If you want to make your chicks work and keep their litter out of their food, get them a feeder with a roller bar on it. You’ll hear them cheeping away as they try to get to their food, but they won’t be kicking litter into it!