Do chicks eat shavings?

[tofupup]

Oh no! Well, I have some dog pee pads, so I will line their crate with that now. Thank you all!

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Mine pecked at the pine shavings a bit, but I did not see them eating them.

The only reason chicks have a beak (aka a pecker) is to explore their world. They do this by pecking at and tasting everything in their surroundings. The things that they find pleasing they eat. The things that they find displeasing they reject.

If this were not so you could not raise incubator chicks because they would soon starve or die from thirst. Yes, some chicks may inadvertently eat a fragment or two of a pine tree but I doubt they will consume much. At any rate, the reason that a chickens' digestive system is so vastly different from our own is because chickens are able to eat everything that we do and so much more.