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I thought pine shavings were fine until I saw my girls' feathers after 6 weeks on sand
I used pine shavings in my coop for almost 3 years and kept telling myself the smell was just part of having chickens, even though I was dumping the whole thing every 2 weeks and my back was killing me. Then a lady from the local poultry swap in Modesto let me walk through her setup, and she had about 4 inches of washed construction sand in there. I kid you not, I stood in that coop for 10 minutes and could not smell a thing. So I ripped out all the shavings the next weekend, spent $60 on sand at the landscape yard, and waited. Six weeks later my 6 hens have clean fluffy butts, no more poop balls stuck to their feathers, and I have not scooped once, just a kitty litter scoop for the droppings every morning which takes me maybe 3 minutes. The eggs also come out way cleaner because their feet are not caked in wet shavings anymore. The one thing nobody warned me about is it is heavy as heck when you first dump it in, so bring a friend. Anyone else switch to sand and did you ever go back to shavings in winter?
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elliotburns1h ago
Kept doing the same thing with my truck for years, just topped off the oil and ignored the leak until a buddy made me actually look under it. Funny how we get used to a thing being a certain way just because it's always been that way. No clue on the winter sand question but I'm curious too since ours freezes up here.
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