Single hen

[Mazzarina]

My girls have a plastic trug in their run, intended as a dust-bath, with play sand and louse powder mixed in it. They seem to love digging around in it and flicking it about the run, so I keep it topped up. Yesterday, though, I was alarmed to discover that nearly all the sand had gone: there must have been nearly 2kg of the stuff in there!

I've noticed their glug has had sand in the bottom, and have seen a few sandy poos, so they must have been feasting on it. Why, oh why, when they get layers' pellets and free-ranging?!

Is eating sand harmful for them? Any advice would be gratefully received! I don't want to take away one of their main sources of entertainment, but I can't imagine sand-eating's such a good idea.

[Saronne]

oooh sandy poos! Don't know the answer to that one, though mine do black , 'composty poos' when they've been free-ranging around the flower borders. Doesn't appear to do them any harm...

 

 

Saronne x

[Hannah and peeps]

When we did dome borders up in our garden we used sand in the soil and my chickens thought it was tasty, so we relly had to digg it in so that the chickens wouldn't find it.

 

I don't know whether sand is bad for them, but I know that when animals like horses graze where there is alot of sand they can get blockages in their guts, so I assume that very large amounts of sand could do the same in chickens.

 

I use garden compost soil from the garden centres in my dustbaths because its a bit softer on their chicken skin (and their insides!) than sand and although they do eat quite a bit of compost its never harmed them and when they do compost poos it fertilizes your grass nicely!

[splodge88]

I think sand acts like grit so hopefully it just gives your chickens nice strong eggshells...in your case they could end up being very strong!! Ours eat quite a bit of sand...but not in quite such big quantities!

[Mazzarina]

Thanks everyone - that's really helpful. If I need a pneumatic drill to get into my next boiled egg, I'll know why!

I think I'll try mixing with compost and see what happens - although perhaps then they'll produce multicoloured, sandy/black striped poo. (why am I thinking of toothpaste all of a sudden?).

[PurpleTree]

Mine did exactly the same thing, they didn't dustbathe in it at all - just ate it. Lots of very sandy looking poos. I took it out of their run again in the end, as they were going through too much.