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IS IT OK IF MY PULLETS EAT THEIR PINE SHAVINGS BEDDING?

Discussion in 'Managing Your Flock' started by crazy huhn, Dec 7, 2008.

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  1. Dec 7, 2008 #1
    crazy huhn

    crazy huhn Chillin' With My Peeps

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    My 22 weeks old pullets love to eat their pine shavings bedding. Does that mean, anything is missing in their diet?

    I feed them Purina Layena (even though they have not started laying yet), a handful of scratch in the evenings and once in a while goodies like yoghurt, crickets, mealworms etc. Oystershell and grit is always available to them and nothing is different in their diet than in my older hens diet. Even though I let them freerange for most of the day, they go for the shavings where ever I spilled some by accident or they eat some in the coop.
     
  3. Dec 7, 2008 #2
    silkiechicken

    silkiechicken Staff PhD Premium Member

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    As long as they have access to grit, I bet they are fine. Most mine just peck out who knows what from the shavings and don't actually swallow them.
     
  5. Dec 7, 2008 #3
    Mahonri

    Mahonri Urban Desert Chicken Enthusiast Premium Member

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    Yeah I've notice that. They peck around in the new shavings but they don't swallow.
     
  7. Dec 8, 2008 #4
    Guinea Goonie

    Guinea Goonie Roosting Elsewhere

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    I housed three 8 week old guinea fowl in the nursery. One day I put in some new (large flake) pine shaving on the floor for warmth.
    One of them started eating the chips. I thought for sure that this bird would be found dead sometime soon. There was a post on this website that showed a necropsy with a chicken that had a crop full of pine shavings that did in fact die.

    I gave the guinea fowl away as I had promised I would in exchange for a different colored lot of guineas.

    I informed the new owners of the problem and just tonight I got back to them. The three guineas are doing just great had intigrated into their established flock of guineas.

    So, you should be fine. I was astonished that they actually do this and it does not hurt them !!
     
  9. Dec 8, 2008 #5
    birdsofparadise

    birdsofparadise Chillin' With My Peeps

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    Chickens are so dumb! Every time I change the pine bedding in my hover, the chicks go nuts taking the sawdust equivalent of a dust bath and then scratching until they bury the feeders and waterers. For at least the first couple of days after the change, Iʻm out there cleaning out their feeders, etc. or pine shaving will be all they will get to eat!
     
  11. Dec 8, 2008 #6
    jjthink

    jjthink Overrun With Chickens

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    Quote:Not dumb. Rather, simply what they felt like doing!.
    JJ
     

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