Cedar with chickens....

My opinion, it is fine as wine, but I feed my dogs chocolate. I always thought they died of old age (14-15 years old) but I guess I poisoned them.

My opinion, cedar is great; in fact I just put a cedar roost (15 feet long) in our pen.

Be prepared, some folks will swear cedar kills and don't feed your dog chocolate, but I will bet you a doughnut to an apple they don't have a bit of hands on experience in either.

 

Quote:I don't want to steal this thread either, but......

Kudzu - what is your take on natural cedar mulch? We have natural cedar mulch beds and right now my coop is sitting in it. But, we do plan to rake it out and put some other material down. I will have 2-3 hens free/yard ranging for a couple hours a day with a few of these cedar beds.... my gut says I'm fine. But I don't even own a chicken yet so what do I know. However, I do feed my hounds Godiva

 

Quote:I wouldn't worry about a 10 year old cedar board at all!!! I put cedar under all my pine shavings to help keep the
bugs away and I have never had a problem.

 

I rasied all my chicks on cedar shavings, in a wire coop. My nest boxes are filled with cedar shavings, and my broodies and hatching eggs sit on cedar. Nothing wrong with it at all (assuming sufficient ventilation - and if you don't have enough ventilation, the birds will die of several things anyway.)

(My dog does his level best to subsist on aluminum foil, sticks, dirt, and chicken poop. When he runs out of all that, he reluctantly eats his expensive dogfood )

 

Quote:HA! HA! Aluminum foil! Now that's gotta hurt on the way out

I am good with ventilation so I believe all is well, just as my gut said.

Thanks for the input

 

I think there is a huge difference between cedar shavings and a cedar board. We ran out of the wood we were using on our coop and ended up using a couple pieces of old cedar board in the run.

RE: Chocolate in dogs. It just depends on the acutal concentration of chocolate. Many years ago, we had a dachshund ~11 lbs. He got on top of the kitchen table and ate 2/3rds of a package of semi-sweet baking chocolate chips. I will spare you the description of the mess we came home to..... the smell of said mess defies description. We rushed him to the emergency vet and after emetics (to make him vomit), activated charcoal, and several days of fluids, we realized he would survive. It was a very close call. However, he did not learn his lesson. A couple of years later, the same little monster at 1/2 a bag of bubble gum. Bubble gum looks the same coming out as it did going in.... very pink! It didn't make him sick, but the image of my dog trying to get the sticky mass of pink gum off his bum is forever burned in my brain.

 

Yes, please don't "diss"' the dogs and chocolate thing. The fact that a large dog fed milk chocolate on occasion (i.e., lower concentration of theobromine (what is toxic to dogs about chocolate) than what is in dark chocolate) survives does NOT mean that chocolate is OK for dogs. Despite my warning them, my brother and SIL's toy poodle got into someone's purse in which a large brownie resided and he ended up VERY sick and having to spend the night at the emergency clinic. $400 later, he was fine, thank goodness, but they are now VERY careful. Smaller dogs are at greater risk than large dogs (assuming amount of chocolate fed is equal); dogs fed chocolate that is darker (higher concentration of theobromine) are at higher risk than those fed milk chocolate.

Please be very careful with this!!

Back to the topic at hand: it is cedar SHAVINGS that are risky--where the oils are exposed to the air. 10 year old wood has very few aromatic oils left. Even so, if you are going to cut the wood I would make the ladder and then leave it outside for a week or so to allow the oils to disseminate before using it.

 

Definate no on the cedar shavings... def no on the chocolate and grapes and turkey skin (cooked) as the theobromine builds up over time in the liver and poisons them and pigging out on Chocolate just kills them quicker. Back on the cedar shavings.....why even risk using them? Cedar wood especially aged as yours is..will be fine.