White millet can be used to train your keets to come to you. Training should start right away. You can find white millet at a feed store. Be sure you are buying pure white millet and not red, yellow or mixed. Only use the millet as a treat, a reward for coming to you. Do not feed it to them as a food or they will get used to it and it will be no big deal. Choose a phrase you wish to use when calling your keets. I chose "Here Chick Chick Chick Chick!!"
1-day-old keets—At one day old the keets showed little interest in the millet, partly because they were still full from eating the yolk and partly because they were not tame enough to come to me. The keets would not come to me on their own. I would hold the keets in one hand and show them the millet, which was in the other palm. Some would peck at it and some would try to get out of my hand. I continued to try to show each keet the millet about three times that day.
2-day-old keets—The keets showed a little more interests in the millet, but still were hesitant to come when called. I continued to show them the millet in my hand by holding them in one hand and the millet in the other. I did this about three times on day 2. Each time I showed a keet the millet I said my phrase, "Here Chick Chick Chick Chick."
3-day-old keets—I put the millet in one palm and called, "Here Chick Chick Chick Chick," holding my palm at the bottom of their cage. Five keets came RUNNING!! (There are 11 keets total.) Now we are getting somewhere!!
4-day-old keets—I put the millet in one palm and called, "Here Chick Chick Chick Chick" and seven keets came running! Later that day I did the same and all of them came! I had to put some millet in the other palm as well, so they would all fit! I decided to do this only two times a day so they do not get used to the taste of the millet so much that it is no longer a treat.
Hey you three in the back, wake up, time for a treat!
Since I did not want to spoil them with millet, but I was having so much fun with them all eating out of my palms, I laid my whole arm across the bottom of their cage and put some of their normal medicated turkey starter feed in my palm. They went wild pecking at my arm and crawling across it. I have a few freckles on my arm and they were enjoying trying to eat them. There was a self-feeder only one foot away, but I kept putting their normal feed in my palm and they all had a total blast eating from my hand and checking out my arm. I really feel the taming is starting to work. I have a few I hold more often than the others, as it would be very hard to really tame all 11, but my goal is to at least semi-tame them all.
