My blind chicken has taught her sisters to eat sand! Help!

[the3quail]

Okay first of all: yes, I understand the concept of grit. And how chickens scrummage through dirt looking for bugs. This is not that.

So we have a blind chicken, and instead of being at the bottom of the pecking order, she’s actually quite popular. She’s taught her sisters a LOT of bad habits— every time she does something weird they seem to copy her!

Anywho she’s come to the conclusion that sand is very tasty. I’m guessing she hears them foraging and tries to copy, but of course all she can find is sand.

She does have a bucket of grit that she knows to help herself to (and obviously she knows where her food bowl is), I think she just wants to join in with the others.

So her diet is a problem in itself— in fact we’re struggling to get her to put on weight because obviously the sand just cycles through her. But it’s becoming a BIGGER problem because her sisters have been watching her eating sand and want to copy HER. Now they ALL eat sand. I don’t mean just a tiny peck here and there. I am talking full course meals of sand. I am literally having to put sand BACK into the pen because they create huge holes and poop the sand out elsewhere. I am not meaning the dust bathing holes either— there really are whole canyons missing from the pen. They go nuts for it.

I am worried 1) for their health, and 2) for my sanity. I’m struggling to come up with a way to resolve this, does anyone have any ideas of how I could train or deter them?

I would say replace the sand with pine shavings. About 3 inches of it. I know it sounds unrealiustic. But our old chicken died from eating to much sand. I hope you get this fixed ASAP.

 

[Acre4Me]

Chickens are funny creatures, and they do seem to easily form bad habits!!

yes, sand is there to stay, you can’t do anything with that. Also, I wouldn’t separate her, she’s already taught them thehabit.

are you able to pen them into their coop for a few hours in the morning with feed and water in the coop, so they eat? Assuming you have a solid floor in coop. If you do not have a solid floor, can you provide them with a solid floor using scrap boards or plywood or blocks or similar? If you are able to do this, you can also try to get them in earlier in the evening so they eat before bed too.

has this impacted their laying at all?