How to feed whole chicks

[passion4poultry]

So I am just switching to a whole prey, raw diet and had a few questions about feeding chicks. I would be supplying them myself so the question is, at what age should I cull the chick for the ferret? Should it be froze for 48 hours first, or is warm and fresh better? Should I wait till the chick is 3-4 weeks, then chop it into sections to provide more for the ferret? I will be raising extra chicks and quail just for my ferret and any and all help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[sherrylynne]

Mine adore day old chicks. It's one of the few things I've not had to try to introduce slowly. They reacted like kids with candy
Unfortunately, they contain very little nutrition for them, so in that way, they are like candy. Mine get them 2X a month, even though they'd like to have them more. The ideal is to feed a variety of ages of anything you can get. So- day old chicks, maybe month old, etc. all the way up to old hens who are no longer laying.
I'd freeze them first, since a lot of birds do have some sort of lice. But if your's don't, then go ahead. It's not like wild meat that could potentially have parasites. You know where these are coming from, and their overall health.

[ferretfreke]

Lice are species specific so lice that infect mice for example will only infect mice.

[sherrylynne]

Cool! I didn't know that All I know is how itchy I'd get after handling any wild birds after they died