Bedding

Cowgrl4life

In the Brooder
9 Years
Apr 6, 2010
89
5
41
I know that the fine pine shavings are a no-no with the cornish cross, once you start withholding food. But is ALL wood shavings a no go? What about the pellets used sometimes in horse stalls?
I'm raising my first batch, and its not going so well. First there was an incident with the setup of the brooder, I lost 3 then. Today I came home and had one on its way out that was perfectly healthy this morning. The only thing I can think is that considering they ran out of food over the course of the day, that maybe he ate some of the shavings I'd been using since I haven't been intentionally restricting feed yet.
I'm just trying to figure out if there is something I should be doing differently, and what the ideal bedding is. Plain newspaper seems way messy with nothing to really absorb.
 
TSC has a large pine shavings that are fine for chicks as most pieces are too large for them to eat. The pellet type horse stuff starts out looking like pellets but moisture actually reduces the pellets to fines. Not what you want for chicken bedding they might eat. When I did CX chicks I got them outside in a wire tractor with a tarp over one end as soon as they were big enough so, my barn cats wouldn't mess with them. I let them free range all day and as soon as they saw me carrying anything that looked like their feeder they would come running. I would hang the filled feeder in the tractor and they all ran into eat and I locked the door for the night. I moved the tractor everyday and I had no clean up and the birds stayed pretty clean.
 

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