If you use pine pellets for bedding, do you wet them? And if so, how?

[gale65]

I haven't been but was reading my chickens for dummies book and noticed it says to "mist" them to make them fall apart and become fluffy. I didn't notice that when I was reading here about them. So do you just use a spray bottle like you do for ironing and mist it all over? How much water does it take (our brooder area is about 4 x 4)?

 

[Hinotori]

The bags I have here say to use a hose and spray them for horse bedding. I don't wet them for the chickens. They do a good enough job breaking them up all on their own between pecking and playing in the water.

They all seem to do fine on the whole pellets. The things really absorb that water too. My EEs knocked over the silkies waterer today and about a gallon spilled. Very easy scoop and clean up and the sawdust was just damp vs a pool of water.

The pellets do really good on keeping smell down too.

 

[gale65]

ok thanks. I'll leave it then. A couple of reasons I was concerned is that they manage to get pellets in the food dish a little, and also we have one chick that loves to dust bathe in the bedding, and then the others come running to pick the little bits off of her.

 

[Hinotori]

I had to raise their waterer up on blocks. Even in the brooder they would dig for china and fling pellets in the waterer. Raising it helps a lot. All mine are two and three months old and the sawdust is still their favorite stuff to dustbathe in.

 

[HenThymes]

If you do use pellet bedding please just be careful. I used "equine" pellet bedding and lost over 12 chicks from several different brooders. Didn't realize till it was too late that it had an odd chemical smell. Different mills use different products, have to compress them with something? At any rate I immediately changed back to regular shavings a quite loosing chicks. Hard lesson learned and will never use pellets again. Not saying they are all bad as I do know others who use them with no problems at all, just make sure they don't smell "odd" if you do use them.

 

[gale65]

Thanks-will definitely keep that in mind. We have 2 bags (all of our bags were equine pine brand) and the one smells piney. I'll double check the 2nd before we use it. After these two are gone we'll probably use pine shavings.