Grit

[onsila]

What's up with grit? What is it? How do you use it? What does it do? How do you know if it's needed? My two ladies found a sand dollar shell I had in my garden and they go after it and squabble over the bits. Is this a sign they need grit? Thank you!

 

[Makomd]

Grit is small rocks that are stored in the gizzard to assist the grinding of food (digestion). If your chickens have access to the outside then they will get their grit from the ground. As far as the sand dollar sounds like chicken games to me, sometimes they are so hilarious to watch them.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

From top to bottom grit comes in three sizes: turkey, adult chicken, and baby chick size. I always keep baby chick grit on hand for the chicks first meal. Because all chickens have an inbred peck response you don't have to show then how or what to eat. Just put it before them. Grit is usually finely crushed granite or sometimes marble. Some folks add charcoal or brown ore, aka iron ore to grit. Grit is what a chicken uses in place of teeth to chew its food. After sitting in the crop where the food is hydrated and is acted on by digestive juices, a chicken's food next passes to the gizzard.

The gizzard is a muscular digestive organ where the hydrated food is ground into small pieces by the grit or jagged stones inside the gizzard. If you will learn were a chicken's gizzard is you can carefully pickup a sleeping chicken, put your ear to its side and hear the gizzard grinding away. As a side note some dinosaurs are also thought to have had gizzards as alligators today do.

The sand dollar sounds like a lack of grit or maybe limestone or calcium, aka oyster shell.