What kind of bedding for goslings

[Bantymama]

Iam getting 8 toulouse goslings. What kind of bedding should i use. I have heard to use straw and not to use pine. This is my first time raising geese. I will post pics when they get here. They should be here wed.

 

[greyfields]

Unless there is something I don't know, you do want pine shavings as beddings. It's cedar shavings you want to avoid for poultry.

 

[raindrop]

I would use pine shavings, they are more absorbent than straw.

 

[nicks chicks 1]

i saw on some sight to use straw because they will eat shavings and it could block them up and kill them. i keep my ducks on hay for this reason, but you have to clean it every day because it dosent absorbe the water that they get everywhere. i put alot of newspaper under the hay to soak up the water also. good luck!

 

[MissPrissy]

My geese are on grass during the day and on pine shavings at night when I lock them up. No problems with it for me.

 

[Omniskies]

Problems with pine are rare but do exist. A lot of the experience I've had with pine, both good and bad, are from small animals, and the problems will roll over to poultry, too.

Pine shavings tend to be extremely dusty and can cause or irritate the respiratory system. Having a lot of air circulating will help (ie. wire cages), but drafts like that can annoy the babies.

Pine can also be eaten up with food to clog the intestines, or get kicked up into the water to be happily chewed.

I'm going to emphasize that while these problems exist, they don't happen often and a lot of people never have an issue in the first place. When I raised rodents I used pine for years and never had a problem with respiratory diseases other people I spoke with did and recently someone I spoke to was horrified that I'd even consider using pine, let alone actually do so (the pine scare is a relatively new thing). When I put pine down as bedding for chicks they happily started eating at it and the food. While they probably would have figured out pine is nasty I didn't take the risk and changed the bedding out.

For large chick pens we finally compromised and put down a layer of pine and a thick layer of hay. The hay they happily played on, the pine absorbed the waste.

Goslings will discover that water is fun very quickly. I finally put my waterer inside another bowl since I didn't have enough room to put in a full grill pan to catch the splashed water. That way you aren't changing the bedding every hour.

Good luck with your goslings

 

[DuckyBoys]

I started my ducks and geese on straw because we had a bunch of it in the barn and I didn't want to cover up the pine shavings to keep the newbies from eating them.

But I have since switched to pine now that they are 2 weeks old and I like it much better. I'll probably stick with the pine.

(I'm counting the days until they can go in the barn!)

 

[vinoo cameron]

Hey All , I got three tufted pet roman geese chicks. I read your stuff . For their general roam area and 16ft*4feet feed area , I simply have two thick , 8*4ft door mats , that every few days take out , put them on a saw horse and pressure hose them clean and let them dry and reuse. For the bedroom roost area 4ft *2 ft I have the finest wood shaving from Marth Wood pine shaving Athens Wisconsin , for 5 dollars a 4*2 ft compressed bundle, which I change every couple of days . A single bag lasts me 4 weeks. The bums do not eat it or they get punished by stuffing their mouth with it till they spit it out

 

[The Dim Side]

Problems with pine are rare but do exist. A lot of the experience I've had with pine, both good and bad, are from small animals, and the problems will roll over to poultry, too.

Pine shavings tend to be extremely dusty and can cause or irritate the respiratory system. Having a lot of air circulating will help (ie. wire cages), but drafts like that can annoy the babies.

Pine can also be eaten up with food to clog the intestines, or get kicked up into the water to be happily chewed.

I'm going to emphasize that while these problems exist, they don't happen often and a lot of people never have an issue in the first place. When I raised rodents I used pine for years and never had a problem with respiratory diseases other people I spoke with did and recently someone I spoke to was horrified that I'd even consider using pine, let alone actually do so (the pine scare is a relatively new thing). When I put pine down as bedding for chicks they happily started eating at it and the food. While they probably would have figured out pine is nasty I didn't take the risk and changed the bedding out.

For large chick pens we finally compromised and put down a layer of pine and a thick layer of hay. The hay they happily played on, the pine absorbed the waste.

Goslings will discover that water is fun very quickly. I finally put my waterer inside another bowl since I didn't have enough room to put in a full grill pan to catch the splashed water. That way you aren't changing the bedding every hour.

Good luck with your goslings

My 4-week-old Roman Tufted keeps eating her pine shavings. It seems pretty frequent that she's eating them, though she's eating a lot of her starter feed and grass when we go outside, too. Should we be switching it out with something more edible since she just wants to chew/eat everything? If so, would hay work?