We have been keeping various chicks for the last 3 months. We started it with 4H and hatching some EE's. They gave us pine shavings and all was well, except for allergies to Pine. After that we switched to the Aspen Bedding that is sold at WM and did not have any issues. We used that up until this week and we bought a much larger cheaper bale of Aspen Bedding at TSC since no one had issues in the span of a couple months, including some petite Bob White chicks. The day after putting the TSC Aspen bedding into the brooder boxes we had 3 of our BO chicks start having balance issues. We removed and cleaned the boxes out and replaced it with with the WM material. The smallest chick ended up dying and the other two are getting better as time goes by. The biggest difference in the material was the size of the chips and neither has a discernable odor. We can only assume it was the bedding and I was wondering if any one else has had an experience like this. Thanks for any feedback. Bill
I need to follow this post. I just recently saw aspen bedding in tractor supply and it looked better *easier on the chickies* than the massive pine shavings we use for the horses... We're getting chicks soon and I was planning on just using the pine... But would aspen work at all? I'm kind of nervous now...
I got "soft wood" shavings from Petco, they were about the size of chainsaw sawdust - very small, a mixture of Pine, Aspen and some other non-scented wood. After that bag ran out and the chicks were bigger I got the small animal size Aspen chips from TSC. I don't care as much for the consistency, but I really don't think the chicks can tell the difference. It's working out for us.
We've been using Aspen from TSC and it's working beautifully. Sorry for your loss! I hope the other chicks continue to improve.
The only difference I noticed with aspen bedding from TSC and the reg wood shavings I had been using is since the aspen is a naturally oil free bedding I don't think that it absorbed odors quite as well as the other. My whole house smelt like dirty brooder boxes when I was using the aspen. It is not nearly as bad as it was since I have switched back to pine shavings.
Update: So far the others that had issues have recovered for the most part. They still have some trouble balancing when stretching or scratching with one leg off the ground. We have continued to use the WM Aspen bedding and tried the TSC Pine shavings. They don't seem to have the same sneezing fits that the humans do when using the Pine, but it is better for us to put up with the allergy than loose the chicks. I can only assume that either something is wrong with the bag of Aspen from TSC or some virus moved through the flock and hit on the weakest. We won't be using the TSC Aspen just to make sure it doesn't have a negative impact. The one loss really hit on the kids moral and wanting to handle the babies as they didn't want to hurt them. Their also resilient and slowly getting back to handling them. Bill
