Pine shavings; where to get em!

t-dawg

In the Brooder
11 Years
Jun 12, 2008
64
0
39
Boston
Where would you get pine shavings other than the local feed store? and if on the internet, which website, ty.
 
I get all my wood shavings from woodworking shops or sawmills. $5 a bale at TSC is just crazy to me. When brooding 100 chicks at a time those bales do not last long and the ones you get around here are full of dust and big chunks and splinters. Find a wood worker that is running a planer or a jointer and you can get all the shavings you want. If they are running a cyclone seperator on their dust extractor even better. Most will be free for the hauling and if you do have to pay you can usually fill a pickup to overflowing for less then $10.
 
Any petstore, most grocery stores, and just any place that sells any pet supplies at all should have some. It will generally be more expensive and smaller bags at those places than a feed store or saw mill but still the most cost effective bedding to use. It's extremely easy to find pine shavings just go drive to some nearby stores and you'll come across some.

The downside to shavings from sawmills and wood shops is that they aren't sifted. They can be extremely dusty which is bad for both your animals and your own respiratory health. They also are likely to have large chunks in them. Personally I would not use such shavings in a brooder or smaller coop. Only in a large well ventilated area. We have used them for horse stalls when we had at least a dozen head being put up nightly but now that we are down to 5 the money that would be saved isn't worth the extra effort of hauling unbagged shavings, the lower quality, and the mess it makes.
 
If they are planer or jointer shavings there will be very little dust. Most of the shavings sold at TSC and farm stores are not worth the money IMO. I worked at a pet store for a bit and all they used were TSC shavings. So much dust in them you could not work with them inside. The high quality pine shavings come from lumber mills too, from the planing and jointing of dimensional lumber.
 
The high quality pine shavings are well screened. TSC are not high quality pine shavings. They are overpriced cheap dusty shavings. Same with America's choice which are sold at Farm and Fleet and most chain petstores around here like petco. Currently for indoor animal cages I've been using the stuff from Orschelns because they have the most uniform size with the least dust of any local shavings. Otherwise I get pestel shavings from the local feedstore which are about as cheap as you can get for bagged shavings but not very well screened so they are a bit dusty and occasionally have wood chunks. Not as big of deal when using them out in the stable or coop.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom