CatsMeowMix
In the Brooder
- Aug 20, 2020
- 9
- 14
- 39
Hi all. I'm looking for some advice (
LoL)
We recently had an expensive and scary experience with our girl Rose:
Thread 'GI Impaction aka Expensive Adventures with Rose' https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/gi-impaction-aka-expensive-adventures-with-rose.1474106/
She is almost ready to rejoin her flock, but now I'm wracking my brain about how to make the outside world more Rose-proof. She inhales whole pieces of grass verses nipping off the tips like her "sisters". I can do my best to keep grass short for when she has her range time. She over indulges on grit, so the vet recommends that I don't leave a dish out for free feeding. But what about the the small gritty stones that are already in the dirt on our property!? And I can't let her dust bath with the others because she eats it and just rolls on the ground next to the bath. Hence how some sand ended up in her GI track mess.
And then there is THE problem: run flooring. We currently just have the girls on some topsoil after they ate down the original grass, but it gets so mucky it's not sustainable. We can't use wood chips because, you guessed it, Rose eats it. I tried hemp hulls this winter but they are not sustainable for our urban set up due to limited storage for the bails. They have a new partially covered 9x12 run planned in a couple of months after we have a major landscape project completed. I can have their area dug out and filled with whatever I want when the backhoe is on site. So what do we do? I'm worried sand will lead to another impaction. Grass won't stick around and will turn to a mess. Plain dirt is hard to keep clean. Shavings are another impaction risk.
Is pea gravel a thing?
Fake grass?
Horse stall mats?
Give up and have a house chicken? (LoL)
*Freaked out about baby leaving the nest (literally)
LoL)We recently had an expensive and scary experience with our girl Rose:
Thread 'GI Impaction aka Expensive Adventures with Rose' https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/gi-impaction-aka-expensive-adventures-with-rose.1474106/
She is almost ready to rejoin her flock, but now I'm wracking my brain about how to make the outside world more Rose-proof. She inhales whole pieces of grass verses nipping off the tips like her "sisters". I can do my best to keep grass short for when she has her range time. She over indulges on grit, so the vet recommends that I don't leave a dish out for free feeding. But what about the the small gritty stones that are already in the dirt on our property!? And I can't let her dust bath with the others because she eats it and just rolls on the ground next to the bath. Hence how some sand ended up in her GI track mess.
And then there is THE problem: run flooring. We currently just have the girls on some topsoil after they ate down the original grass, but it gets so mucky it's not sustainable. We can't use wood chips because, you guessed it, Rose eats it. I tried hemp hulls this winter but they are not sustainable for our urban set up due to limited storage for the bails. They have a new partially covered 9x12 run planned in a couple of months after we have a major landscape project completed. I can have their area dug out and filled with whatever I want when the backhoe is on site. So what do we do? I'm worried sand will lead to another impaction. Grass won't stick around and will turn to a mess. Plain dirt is hard to keep clean. Shavings are another impaction risk.
Is pea gravel a thing?
Fake grass?
Horse stall mats?
Give up and have a house chicken? (LoL)
*Freaked out about baby leaving the nest (literally)
