Chicken feeding on equine pine pellets

[kjorgey]

Today, I decided to clean out the top layer of my oak chips in my run and since the wood chip pile I have on hand has concerns of being infested with ticks. I topped off the run with equine pine pellets turned it in with some of the existing oak nuggets and it is a nice clean run area. After a morning of free ranging, the girls were let back in. I can't tell if they are just checking things out by pecking at the pellets or eating them. Anyone have experience with this? Will they eat them? If so, with it cause them any harm? They normally just feed on Purina crumbles and what they gather on foraging time. Thanks!

 

[sourland]

I maintained pigeons on pine pellets for a while, and they did not eat them. Never used them on chickens, and use with pigeons was only for a short period of time as they broke down too rapidly.

 

[drinkoj]

Watching this because my two puppies LOVE eating these things as they pass the cat litter boxes we use them in.

 

[montecitomama]

Hens possibly dead from eating pine pellet bedding: Ten days ago, I cleaned out my coops and put in pine pellets (instead of shavings) as a bedding. Since then I have mysteriously had 3 hens die. All of them had engorged croups. I have about 50 hens in 6 different coops. I have always fed them "lay crumble" and as they have consistently rejected "lay pellets" as food. I am not certain that the 3 hens died from eating the pine pellets but my daughter noticed them picking at the pine pellets that had fallen out of the doors of the coops onto the ground and I thought nothing of it. Now after finding 3 dead hens, all with engorged croups, I am thinking that they died from eating the pine pellets. Today we are removing all the pine pellets and going back to pine shavings. Just hope to share this with others to spare you the anguish.

 

[DorothyBlancheandRose]

I think you have to wet them down as soon as (or before) spreading them out. That way they are already expanded when the chickens are exposed to them, and sawdust isn’t something they’d be interested in pecking at. If you don’t expand them with water first, chickens could eat a compressed pellet, then any water they drink, it could expand in their crop and suffocate them- awful! I’m so sorry you lost some girls.

 

[Ponypoor]

Hens possibly dead from eating pine pellet bedding: Ten days ago, I cleaned out my coops and put in pine pellets (instead of shavings) as a bedding. Since then I have mysteriously had 3 hens die. All of them had engorged croups. I have about 50 hens in 6 different coops. I have always fed them "lay crumble" and as they have consistently rejected "lay pellets" as food. I am not certain that the 3 hens died from eating the pine pellets but my daughter noticed them picking at the pine pellets that had fallen out of the doors of the coops onto the ground and I thought nothing of it. Now after finding 3 dead hens, all with engorged croups, I am thinking that they died from eating the pine pellets. Today we are removing all the pine pellets and going back to pine shavings. Just hope to share this with others to spare you the anguish.

Wood pellets for horse bedding require 'wetting' to make them swell thus making your stall bedding. If your hens eat the pellets then drink water the pellets could theoretically be swelling up. This is why people have been using them in their kitty litter - the urine makes the pellets swell up.

We feed beet pulp pellets to horses but these require soaking overnight to swell up - have heard of people feeding these to their horses without soaking and causing the horse to colic and die.

I would be wetting those pellets prior to bedding down with them - or just get bagged shavings and use that (which I see you are doing).