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In case you don't get an answer on your question: How much dirt is she eating? or is she picking through and finding little bits of gravel and rocks and eating them? My beds are sand. Remember this is how a chicken "digests" or "chews" its food. The food and rocks, gravel, etc are in the gizzard. The gizzard muscle then contracts and the rocks/gravel are used to munch the food down so that it can go further into the "process". I am sure there are more experience bird owners who can explain the process better: CL? Illia? anyone. But yes they do eat "dirt".
I do know about the gizzard and that they eat small gravel, I just didn't know they would eat plain old brown dirt. She isn't picking out any small gravel, she just kind of scoops the dirt with the side of her beak. I saw one of the others do it too, so I guess it's okay, lol. She is also eating her food, not just dirt, so I'm not too worried. I gave them some watermelon last night, and one of them ate a seed or two, but the rest is still there. Not interested at all. Like Ariloveschickens, I thought they would love it. Oh well.
Thanks for answering. Oh, and what kind of sand do you have? I went to Lowe's today to get a bag for their dust bath corner, and who knew there was three kinds!
I had a dump truck of sand brought in. I bought "washed" sand. My sand is 4-6 inches deep in my runs. It makes it nice and easy to clean them.
Try cutting the watermelon up into tiny bite size pieces, put them on/in their goodie tray and let them try. they just don't know yet. How old are they again? When mine were pretty young we went to Petco and bought live meal worms....WOW....what a show the chicks gave us...they loved them. BTW, mine were skeptical of whole watermelon at first too. Now, if I put a rind in the run with some melon on it....I will come back the next day and all that is left is a thin layer of the rind. EVERYTHING else is gone.
In case you don't get an answer on your question: How much dirt is she eating? or is she picking through and finding little bits of gravel and rocks and eating them? My beds are sand. Remember this is how a chicken "digests" or "chews" its food. The food and rocks, gravel, etc are in the gizzard. The gizzard muscle then contracts and the rocks/gravel are used to munch the food down so that it can go further into the "process". I am sure there are more experience bird owners who can explain the process better: CL? Illia? anyone. But yes they do eat "dirt".
I do know about the gizzard and that they eat small gravel, I just didn't know they would eat plain old brown dirt. She isn't picking out any small gravel, she just kind of scoops the dirt with the side of her beak. I saw one of the others do it too, so I guess it's okay, lol. She is also eating her food, not just dirt, so I'm not too worried. I gave them some watermelon last night, and one of them ate a seed or two, but the rest is still there. Not interested at all. Like Ariloveschickens, I thought they would love it. Oh well.
Thanks for answering. Oh, and what kind of sand do you have? I went to Lowe's today to get a bag for their dust bath corner, and who knew there was three kinds!
I had a dump truck of sand brought in. I bought "washed" sand. My sand is 4-6 inches deep in my runs. It makes it nice and easy to clean them.
Try cutting the watermelon up into tiny bite size pieces, put them on/in their goodie tray and let them try. they just don't know yet. How old are they again? When mine were pretty young we went to Petco and bought live meal worms....WOW....what a show the chicks gave us...they loved them. BTW, mine were skeptical of whole watermelon at first too. Now, if I put a rind in the run with some melon on it....I will come back the next day and all that is left is a thin layer of the rind. EVERYTHING else is gone.
