Sand in the brooder?

[macadam8157]

Hey leight54 sorry if I asked to many ?'s on your thread!

thanks for the good post!

 

[dbounds10]

Quote:
Yes - I just bought this one and I LOVE IT!
http://goliathscoop.com/pictures.html


I use sand in my coop and run and wish like HECK I would have used it in the brooder. Would have been much cleaner.

To the other poster using parakeet grit - baby chicks can get kidney damage from to much calcium. I would say stop using that.

 

[macadam8157]

Quote:
Yes - I just bought this one and I LOVE IT!
http://goliathscoop.com/pictures.html


I use sand in my coop and run and wish like HECK I would have used it in the brooder. Would have been much cleaner.

To the other poster using parakeet grit - baby chicks can get kidney damage from to much calcium. I would say stop using that.

Do you use play sand and it works well with that??? How do you buy this???

 

[FiveHens]

Sand is not absorbent. So, unless you have the heat-lamp on and its drying out all the time, it will occasionally get wet and smell. That is the advantage of pine shavings.

 

[WalkerH]

Mine are out of their brooder for the majority of the day. Have my two flock guardians, my pit and my dachshund out with them in case any neighborhood dogs come around, but so far so good. So they only get food and water for the time they are outside. So I haven't had issues with water spillage.

 

[Shikens!]

Quote:
Is silica bad? All the sand I have ever seen marked as play sand is always 100% silica. Is this a location thing? I'm in FL.

 

[ADozenGirlz]

Quote:
That was my exact thought on sand in the brooder, even with two chicks. I wouldn't put sand in the brooder as the bedding material. If you want to make a little sand-box for them to play in, they'd probably enjoy that (although they will poop in there too).

I have sand in both of my runs and LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it. However, the sand is outside and has some place for the liquids to settle down into, in a brooder box, the plastic would keep the moisture close to the chicks and you really don't want that. Pine shavings are absorbent, dry quickly and keep the odors to a minimum.

I have used pine shavings for all of my brooder babies and have never had a problem with anyone eating it (I'm not saying they haven't ever eaten it, I'm just saying it has never caused a problem).

It is a good idea to begin to provide a small dish with sand in it for them if you are going to begin feeding them treats though. They will need the sand to mash up the food in their crops. If they were outside with a mama hen, they would be shown how to do this by her and would naturally ingest as much as required. Making it available to them is a good idea.

 

[dbounds10]

Quote:
Yes - I just bought this one and I LOVE IT!
http://goliathscoop.com/pictures.html


I use sand in my coop and run and wish like HECK I would have used it in the brooder. Would have been much cleaner.

To the other poster using parakeet grit - baby chicks can get kidney damage from to much calcium. I would say stop using that.

Do you use play sand and it works well with that??? How do you buy this???

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on the "Home Page" link. Then you can buy it.

I use play sand in the coop and construction sand in the run that we had from when we put our septic tank in. In my experience, both are absorbant. I have had no issues with wet sand, inside or out. Of course the outside sand is wet when it rains but dries fast. My girls are 8 weeks old and their poop is HUGE so this scoop works well to get out the big piles. I sprinkle PDZ and DE in the coop, this helps with the drying. After I scoop out the big piles, I run my metal garden rake through the sand to mix in the little poops which dry up and i never see them again

If your chicks are small and still in a brooder, I would think you have a heat lamp on them and I suppose that would help the dry time. I kept my water up on a brick for stability and never had an issue with it spilling until the got to big for the brooder.

 

[LilliansMamaw]

Hi everyone, I'm new at this and my Dh has just finished building my run and I'm debating between using sand or pea gravel in the run. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

 

[TheMainException]

I use play sand for mine. They are still small enough that they can eat the larger bits in the sand as grit. I've tried getting them bigger stuff and they aren't ready yet. I use a kitty litter scooper for cleaning out the brooder.