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How to feed baby chicks
The pounds of starter come from Maryland's feed table. The brooder floor comes from Maine. This site's feed and coop functions are for laying hens, and the worked example shows the number you get if you point them at chicks anyway.
Built by Jeremy Panasuk. Published October 3, 2026.
What to put in the feeder
Maryland's feeding guide says to use a commercial feed matched to the bird's type and age, and to use its amount table only as a guide. The amounts below are total feed for one bird, from Vest and Dale (2002), as printed in that guide.
| Bird | Age | Total feed | Ration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brown-egg layer | Day old to 6 weeks | 4 lb | Starter |
| Brown-egg layer | 7 to 18 weeks | 46 lb | Grower |
| Brown-egg layer | 19 to 70 weeks | 104 lb | Layer |
| White-egg layer | Day old to 6 weeks | 3 lb | Starter |
| White-egg layer | 7 to 18 weeks | 12 lb | Grower |
| White-egg layer | 19 to 70 weeks | 80 lb | Layer |
| Meat bird | Day old to 3 weeks | 2 lb | Starter |
| Meat bird | 4 to 7 weeks | 7 lb | Finisher |
Maine's chick bulletin starts every chick on an all-mash starter for six weeks, then a finisher for meat birds or a grower/developer for other birds. Its protein bands are separate from Maryland's pound totals: pullets (future layers) get starter at 18–20% protein for weeks 0–6, grower at 15% for weeks 6–18, and layer feed at 17% protein from 18 weeks on. Broilers and fryers get starter at 22–23% protein for weeks 0–6 and finisher at 18–20% for weeks 6–8. Use fresh feed stored no longer than four weeks.
Utah State says layer-strain chicks get a 20–21% protein starter from 0 to 6 weeks, and it says not to feed a layer diet to chickens that are not in egg production, because the calcium is too high. Missouri says the same split: starting diets for young birds, a laying diet for mature hens, and problems from the wrong diet can show up quickly and are often irreversible.
Maryland says scratch grains are unnecessary on a complete diet and, if you feed them, should generally be about 10% of daily intake because they dilute the ration. An insoluble grit is part of that scratch sentence. Maine's first feed is the all-mash starter, not scratch.
Coccidiosis is the disease both Maryland and Maine flag for chicks on the ground. Maine says a medicated feed with a coccidiostat is the conventional approach in starter and grower only. Chicks vaccinated with Coccivac should get non-medicated feed, with no coccidiostat. Read the tag. Maryland says many coccidiostats have a withdrawal time before birds are marketed.
Floor, feeder, and water while they are small
Maine's space table, per bird:
| Age | Floor | Feeder | Waterer |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–4 weeks | 0.5 sq ft | 1.0 in | 0.5 in |
| 4–8 weeks | 1.0 sq ft | 2.0 in | 0.75 in |
| 8–12 weeks | 2.0 sq ft | 2.5 in | 1.0 in |
For the first week to 10 days, Maine says you can feed in cut-down cardboard boxes with sides about 1¼ inches high, feed in piles. After 10 days, give enough feeder so every chick can eat at once, and keep feeders no more than half full. Fountain waterers: one quart jar per 16 chicks the first week, one quart per 20 chicks from one to four weeks old, and a one-gallon waterer per 20 chicks at 12 weeks. Clean the waterers every day.
Adult coop math is the wrong floor. calcCoopSize uses 4 sq ft indoors per standard bird. Twelve chicks would come back as 48 sq ft. Maine's first four weeks are 0.5 × 12 = 6 sq ft. The flock-size table is for the housing those birds need later, not for the brooder.
Heat, without borrowing a wattage
Maine measures temperature at chick level, 2 to 3 inches off the floor: 95°F the first week, then 5°F less each week until 70°F. Chicks huddled together are cold. Chicks spread under the heat are comfortable. Chicks staying away from it are too warm. They need fresh air without a draft. You may turn the brooder off on warm days.
Maryland's housing page, quoted on the winter heat page, starts the first week at 90–95°F and drops 5°F each week until the chicks are five weeks old and the room is about 70–75°F, with the lamp at least 18 inches above the floor. Utah State's basics sheet describes a different gradient: about 110°F under the heat source and 84°F at the edge of the brooder ring, decreased about 5°F a week, and it names a 250 watt infrared light as an example heat source. These are three published schedules. This page does not average 95°F and 110°F, and it does not assign Utah's 250 watt bulb to Maine's 6 sq ft floor.
Worked example: 12 brown-egg chicks
Maryland's starter total is the feed plan: 12 × 4 lb = 48 lb of starter from day old through 6 weeks. The same 12 white-egg chicks would be 12 × 3 = 36 lb. Meat birds are on a different row: 2 lb of starter each through 3 weeks, then 7 lb of finisher from 4 to 7 weeks.
Maine's first-month space for these 12: 12 × 0.5 = 6 sq ft of floor, 12 × 1.0 = 12 inches of feeder, 12 × 0.5 = 6 inches of waterer. Twelve is under 16, so one quart jar meets Maine's first-week fountain count of one jar per 16 chicks.
What the laying-hen functions return if you ignore that and type 12 anyway:
calcFeed(12, 6, 22)uses 0.25 lb per bird per day. Daily feed is 3 lb. Over 6 weeks the function rounds 3 × 7 × 6 to 126 lb, and at $22 per 50 lb bag the total cost field is $55.44. That 126 lb is a hen figure. It is not Maryland's 48 lb of starter.calcCoopSize(12, "standard")returns 48 sq ft of coop and 120 sq ft of run. Maine's brooder floor for weeks 0–4 is 6 sq ft.calcHeat(6, 40, true)is the brooder floor from Maine (6 sq ft) and a room temperature of 40°F, which is above this function's 20°F adult line, so adult watts are 0. Chick watts are the site ratio 250 W per 16 sq ft, capped at 16 sq ft and rounded up to the next 50 W: 6 × 250 / 16 = 93.75, which rounds to 100 W. Vent area on the site's 1-per-10 ratio, in half-foot steps, is 0.5 sq ft. Maine and Maryland do not publish that 100 W or that 0.5 sq ft.
Run your own count
Common mistake
Feeding layer pellets because the bag is already in the shed, or typing the chicks into the feed-cost calculator and buying 126 lb of layer feed for a group whose starter total is 48 lb. Maryland's warning on layer feed for a young chicken is bone and kidney damage, including death. The matching space mistake is brooding them on the adult coop floor from the flock table. Six square feet is the Maine number for 12 chicks in weeks 0–4. Forty-eight square feet is the later hen coop.
Limits, and when to call someone
Maryland says nutritional problems in a growing bird can appear quickly and are often irreversible, and that diagnostic labs usually see deficiency diseases such as curly toe paralysis, nutritional coryza, and rickets in birds on homemade rations. A chick that cannot stand, or a group that came from a non-commercial mix, is a veterinarian or extension call, not a ration you finish at home. Maine says coccidiosis is a common killer of chicks. Follow the feed tag on medicated starter, and use non-medicated feed when the chicks had Coccivac. Buy from an NPIP hatchery, which is Maine's instruction and also the first line of the USDA APHIS checklist on the new-bird page.
Heat-lamp clearance and fire warnings for a brooder lamp are on the winter heat page. Daily chick water in gallons, which Maine's inch table does not state, starts on the water page with Missouri's 3 gallons per 100 chicks at six weeks.
Related
- Chicken coop calculator — feed, coop, and heat tabs use the functions this page compares.
- Layer feed cost once the birds are on a laying diet, not before.
- Brooder temperature and lamp clearance.
- Adult coop size for when they leave the brooder.
Compiled with AI assistance from the sources below. Spot an error? Email jpanasuk@gmail.com.
Sources
- University of Maryland Extension, "Feeding the Flock" (updated May 11, 2022). Table 5 amounts are cited there to Vest and Dale, 2002. https://extension.umd.edu/resource/feeding-flock. Accessed Oct 3, 2026.
- University of Maine Cooperative Extension, Bulletin 2219, "Giving Chicks a Good Start." https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/2219e/. Accessed Oct 3, 2026.
- Utah State University Extension, "Basics for Raising Backyard Chickens" (June 2010). https://extension.usu.edu/poultry/research/basics-for-raising-backyard-chickens. Accessed Oct 3, 2026.
- University of Missouri Extension, "Small Flock Series: Managing a Family Chicken Flock," G8350 (reviewed September 2017). https://extension.missouri.edu/publications/g8350. Accessed Oct 3, 2026.
- University of Maryland Extension, "Housing Requirements," for the 90–95°F brooder schedule and the 18-inch lamp clearance already quoted on this site's winter page. https://www.extension.umd.edu/resource/housing-requirements. Accessed Oct 3, 2026.