No, I haven’t, but that’s an interesting thought! I’ll give it a try. My only filters are coffee filters, but we’ll see what happens.
The feeds with larger particles, especially particles of different colors, shapes, and sizes, are more likely to confuse the chickens and lead them to eat too much actual grit if it were to be mixed with the feed. The grit stones would stand out and be more obvious in a feed that's otherwise uniform in color and consistency, like, say, crumble. So the chicken can see them and avoid them. But when it's a mixed pile of diverse particles like this, it would be much harder to see what's a stone and what's not. They'd gobble the whole pile up, especially if it's fermented and clumping and they eat a whole clump as opposed to picking out individual pieces. I have no idea what the ingredient "grit" actually is in this particular feed though, maybe you can contact the company and ask? I'm just inherently skeptical of anybody who tells me chickens are smart and can watch out for themselves, because they do for a fact eat styrofoam, screws, plastic and all kinds of other junk they supposedly should know not to eat, and yet, they do...
In the normal course of events, chickens eat very very small amounts of grit, and they eat it infrequently, because it lasts so long in their gizzards. So they'd eat a stone here and there, and it passes through the crop and down on to the gizzard without issue. But if they were eating a large amount quickly, like if it was mixed with feed and they couldn't tell, or ate too quickly and didn't bother inspecting every piece, then a larger amount of grit would pile up in the crop and cause a blockage. Grit particles don't slide past each other easily, because they are rough and have so many facets. They clump and kind of get stuck locked together, making it hard to siphon them through the narrow passage out of the crop (especially since chickens can't swallow like we do, to force the food down via muscles, but rather rely on gravity for that). So the issue with large amounts of grit is that it can cause crop impaction that is often impossible to resolve without surgery, and can lead to death.
heh. I call them "trash children" because their feathers look kinda unkempt and they keep trashing the brooder.
My girls have been outside (in the run) for weeks, digging, zooming, and sunbathing. Rarely more than 5 minutes at each!
It was on this very forum that people weighed in with actual stories of chickens getting crop impactions from too much grit. And there's a huge difference between a chicken walking up to a pile of gravel out in the open or by the roadside, expecting it to be a pile of gravel and treating it as such, vs. diving into its designated food dish where it expects to find nothing but food, so it gulps it down believing it to be food. The advice of don't mix grit with food is an enduring one that continues being given out by vets and experienced chicken owners, on this forum and beyond, which in itself should be enough to make you at least stop and consider it before tossing it with such certainty. A lot of other common myths have long been debunked, and people patrol this forum to remind others of this fact. But this one endures. There's gotta be a reason for that.
Uh-oh. I tried giving grit to my 3 day old chicks in a separate container yesterday and they didn't stop eating it so I took it out after 20 minutes or so.
3 day old is too young for anything that's not food - they don't know what food is yet and will eat anything, in any amount. It's usually advised to put paper towels or something else on top of the bedding for the first week, until they have reliably learned what food is, to avoid them eating too much of anything else (whether bedding, grit, or other). Once you uncover the bedding, you can give them a little bit of grit (chick grit, the smaller size particles) - some people sprinkle it on top of the food, or in another container, but not a full container of it where they can overeat. They don't need much anyway. If they were with a hen, she would start teaching them from day 1 - what is food and what isn't, how to eat, etc. But without a mom, they are more likely to make mistakes, so they need more help from us in preventing the mistakes.
Yeah I took the grit out and gave them some wet crumble instead and they went bonkers, haha.
