Brooder bedding

[Debbie292d]

I want to reign myself in a little this year. In years gone by with new baby chicks I find myself sometimes using nothing short of 5 different bedding types: Combo's of: papertowels, old cotton t-shirts, pine shavings, flock fresh, timothy hay, hemp. I swear I can't seem to standardize on any one thing mostly because I'm not confident about anything but papertowels and tshirts. Flock fresh has Zeolite and I don't know if that's okay for babies. - ?? Pine shavings they can eat which is no good; timothy/hay in general nothing wrong that I know of but I can't see all that is going on well enough (aka chick poo) and hemp, I just haven't embraced it fully so it's sort of scattered in there with all of the other stuff. Good grief, at least I'm good at multi tasking, LOL. SO, can anybody help me with concerns over flock fresh? And/or endorse hemp? Babies coming next week As always, TIA you awesome BYC ers!

For the first week, we use paper towels. After that, it's horse bedding pellets. No smell, no dust. Of course they might eat some once broken down until they figure out they're gross, just like they do the pine shavings. These are 100% pine so won't hurt them. We provide garden dirt in a small box or shallow tupperware container in case they do eat any.

Around $8 for a 40# bag. Need about 1/4 of a bag in this brooder that last about a month or so. In the coop, we only change them once a year.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I haven't tried hemp myself with chicks. Maybe I will this year.

First batch of chicks brooded indoors had paper towels and aspen shavings. Since they were in a bathtub it made it easy to clean, just pick up the paper towels and toss into the yard waste bin.

After that I switched to brooding outside. A bit of aspen shavings for cushion but otherwise the chicks are directly on the run floor. Zero extra cost, zero cleaning. Downside is that only works if you brood outside.