hay or straw? help

[Eggie and Me]

We started off with shavings. Prior to our flock starting to lay we added straw and hay to some of the boxes. Apparently our flock (now 29 wks old) prefers the shavings. They love playing with the hay and straw,

but when it comes to laying their eggs, they only lay eggs in boxes with shavings. Go figure?

............... We currently use shavings only in the boxes, and a combination of shavings, straw, hay, bermuda and alfalfa on their raised coop floor. I might add

our local feed store, San Dimas Feed and Grain gives their "scrap" (alfalfa, bermuda, hay and straw) away for FREE

. Thank you again San Dimas Feed and Grain. You have our business.

 

[gritsar]

A.T. Hagan :

I use hay because I can seldom find straw around here. Bermuda hay works well in nest boxes provided you don't allow it to get wet much.

.....Alan.

Same thing here. I can go to a neighbor's house and get a square bale of hay for $3 or drive all the way into town and start searching for the straw. I'm not gonna fix what ain't broke.​

 

[BlackBart]

I use hay because straw is more expensive around here. Added bonus, it smells nice too.
I put in DE, then shavings, then hay.
I change the hay every six weeks or so. Never had a problem of it going moldy.

Some people I know just use shavings in the nest boxes.

 

[slightlyscrambled]

dont think it really matters what you use as long as it is soft and the hens like it, some of mine like shavings some like the straw because they like to build a nest. if you had to you could probably use shredded paper but might have to change it out more often.

 

[NYREDS]

I prefer straw for nesta & bedding. It doesn't matt like hay does for one thing. Straw is much more brittle & i breaks up when the birds scratch in it. Makes it great for a deep litter system. I also like the golden colour & think a pen of fresh straw looks great.

 

[kcsunshine]

I use a mix of shavings and hay ( because my hubby buys it for his rabbits and I filch it

 

[Kim_NC]

We keep shavings in the nest boxes and under roost areas. I toss grass hay on the main floor areas, more so in the Winter than warm weather. The girls love scratching around in it. Between the seed heads and leaves, they consume about 40% of it. We've never had a mold problem, but our coops are dry too.

 

[SunAngel]

I used to use the pine shavings, but they just got too costly when you have 4 coops and 3 brooders. I switched to straw and am much happier with it. We get about 30 bales for free from a farmer friend each Fall and that lasts me almost a year.

The chickens love scratching around in it when I first put new in there...they never cared much when I put new shavings in. It breaks down faster in the coop and in the compost pile, than the shavings do.

 

[gsim]

Straw better than hay. Also, alfalfa hay is supposed to be bad for chickens, and they do eat hay.

I use grass clippings both for litter and for nests. They work fine and are free. I add leaves in Fall of the year and keep straw on hand for winter. Makes coop smell good too. No health issues in the 5 months I have used them. I find that I have to add far less litter if I use poop planks to catch poop under roosts. Required morning scraping when I go out to open coop, but I have advantage of being to be able to save poop in a 30 gallon plastic bin for use on garden in late fall/winter, and for composting in warm weather. A win-win. And did I mention that the grass is free? Another win-win. (Poop mixed in old grass clippings good for mulching new grass seed bed, but not for garden given all of the possibilities for seeds getting into garden.)

If I could get them, I would take wood chips. They are free at times when line crews are out doing line clearing. They like to have a place to dump them and I provide that on our place.

 

[sundance]

i would love to have wood chips from the phone co mulching the trees, but here in Middle tennessee they have thorn trees and these thorns are sometime 3 inchs long, only problem is that they will grow everywhere the pieces find dirt enough to put down roots. so I skip the wood chips and stay with the hay. my ladies love it.