I used to be the biggest advocate for DE - you'd have thought I had stock in the company! I put a little under their bedding, a little in their nest boxes, a little on the floor of their run and mixed it in with the stuff in their dust bath. Every week I was out there protecting my flock. I was doing them a great service, helping prevent nasties from getting to my girls, right? Then one day I was out there doing my DE thing, and of course I was wearing a bandanna over my face. Why? Well because the dust from spreading it around, even trying to be careful, made me cough and besides, the back of the bag said to wear respiratory protection.
Um, wait a minute.....my chickens are kicking up this dust when they scratch, when they arrange the straw in their nests, and definitely when they dust bathe....I could actually see the DE particles floating in a sunbeam while one of the girls was in the dust bath having herself a great time! That was my "what the heck am I DOING??" moment! I'm supposed to protect my respiratory system when applying it but I make them live in and breath the constant dust from it? Their respiratory systems are more delicate than mine!! And that doesn't even take into account the fact that all those little bugs I wanted to have breaking down the deep litter in my coop were being killed right along with the stuff I didn't want in there!
So that was the end of DE for me. No product in a bag, miracle or not, is going to do a better job for the birds I'm responsible for than diligence, a little extra effort, and good hygiene practices out in the coop and run. As for feeding it? Well, as far as I know most internal parasites are found in the gut. DE is ground up in the crop. And wet DE loses the sharpness of those little edges anyway. So....again, diligence and a little good husbandry go a lot further. So others can use it if they want. But as for me, I can't ask a bag of microscopic skeletons to do what I should be doing.
