Bedding

[Jgutsue]

Hi, I’m new to raising chickens and my husband is a woodworker. Wondering if Oak, maple and Walnut shavings are safe? I see that cedar is not according to another post.
And if they are safe, do I wet them down? It is more of a dust than a shaving… And it would be for their coop not for the run.
Thanks

 

[Barbours]

Hi, I’m new to raising chickens and my husband is a woodworker. Wondering if Oak, maple and Walnut shavings are safe? I see that cedar is not according to another post.
And if they are safe, do I wet them down? It is more of a dust than a shaving… And it would be for their coop not for the run.
Thanks

Personally I would just use hay to be on the safe side. Since birds ain't the smartest things. They tend to eat the shavings and will get an impaction from it.

 

[Barbours]

Hi, I’m new to raising chickens and my husband is a woodworker. Wondering if Oak, maple and Walnut shavings are safe? I see that cedar is not according to another post.
And if they are safe, do I wet them down? It is more of a dust than a shaving… And it would be for their coop not for the run.
Thanks

If you do want to do the shavings though. You'll have to do large cut shavings to keep them from swallowing them. But like I said hay would be your best bet. Cause the dust in the shavings chickens are really sensitive to.

 

[Ifitaintbroke]

Hi, I’m new to raising chickens and my husband is a woodworker. Wondering if Oak, maple and Walnut shavings are safe? I see that cedar is not according to another post.
And if they are safe, do I wet them down? It is more of a dust than a shaving… And it would be for their coop not for the run.
Thanks

I use aspen. Easy to find at TSC.

 

[NatJ]

Hi, I’m new to raising chickens and my husband is a woodworker. Wondering if Oak, maple and Walnut shavings are safe? I see that cedar is not according to another post.
And if they are safe, do I wet them down? It is more of a dust than a shaving… And it would be for their coop not for the run.
Thanks

Those should be safe.

If you have newly-hatched chicks, I would use something else for the first few days, something the chicks cannot eat while they are learning what food is. Paper towels work well for that, and so do puppy pads (sold for puppies to pee on.) Newspapers are too slippery (chicks can hurt their joints as their feet slide around.)

After a few days, when the chicks know what food is good to eat, then shavings or sawdust should not be a problem for chicks or adult chickens. It is good to provide grit (small rocks), because then the chickens' gizzards can properly grind up any shavings they do eat.

I do not think you need to wet them down. In general, chickens do best in dry conditions, not damp ones.

If you have shavings of different sizes or different levels of dust, the less-dusty ones are a better choice for chicken bedding. If they are all the same, I would just use them

 

[Gemstateranch]

Personally I would just use hay to be on the safe side. Since birds ain't the smartest things. They tend to eat the shavings and will get an impaction from it.

Good to know, I've seen ours eating the hay that we use, but didnt know they could get an impaction from wood shavings.

 

[NatJ]

Good to know, I've seen ours eating the hay that we use, but didnt know they could get an impaction from wood shavings.

Chickens can get an impacted crop from shavings, but they can also block their crop with a tangle of hay. Most chickens will be fine with either bedding choice. A few stupid ones can have problems no matter what you give them.

 

[Gemstateranch]

Yea thats crazy, I would have thought making sure they have access to grit would take care of that.

 

[NatJ]

Yea thats crazy, I would have thought making sure they have access to grit would take care of that.

For most chickens, that is all you need to do. But things stuck in the crop will never reach the gizzard to get ground up, so grit only works if things keep moving.

An impacted crop seems to be fairly rare (once per many hundreds or thousands of chickens). But with so many people having chickens, it definitely happens to some of them.

For each chicken that does have a problem, there is an owner that will be much more concerned in future, and probably a bunch of people who read about it on the internet that also get concerned. Meanwhile, other people have raised chickens for years on the same bedding and have never seen a problem, so they don't see what all the fuss is about.

I can't say how much any individual should worry, just saying that I see why some people do worry much more than others. This happens with any kind of bedding, and most other aspects of chicken keeping as well. There is always someone who had a problem doing it that way, and someone else who has done that for years and never had a problem.

 

[Barbours]

Good to know, I've seen ours eating the hay that we use, but didnt know they could get an impaction from wood shavings.

But like someone else said. If you give them the grit for the crop it should help break stuff down.