Do Not Use Crushed Granite!!!

[Altairsky]

Grit is necessary for chickens. Any stone of the right size is good. No chicken ever died for eating a stone in the whole chicken history. In fact, birds have been eating stones since when they were dinosaurs.
Chickens get hardware disease if they eat screws, nails, iron wire, glass and any sharp object that is almost always man made.
So let's stop demonizing grit.

 

[K0k0shka]

No chicken ever died for eating a stone in the whole chicken history.

Chickens die quite commonly from eating grit, but not in the way OP probably imagines it. Rather, it's when people don't do their homework on educating themselves on how to care for this new animal in their lives, and mix the grit with the poultry feed, causing the chickens to eat way too much grit (because they are gulping it down indiscriminately together with the feed). Overeating grit causes a dangerous buildup of rocks in the chicken's digestive system, the chicken gets clogged, and dies. I've heard horror stories from vets - like a chicken whose crop looked like the bottom of a fish tank, full of gravel and compacted...

So, the bottom line is still the same - to OP and to anybody else - educate yourself before speaking, and most importantly, before taking on an animal you don't know much about.

 

[Altairsky]

mix the grit with the poultry feed, causing the chickens to eat way too much grit

Never heard of this. Chickens are smarter than most people think.
I used to give my chickens some feed that had oyster shell mixed in.
I quickly switched to a different feed because my chickens weren't eating the oyster shell, therefore clogging the feeder with oyster shell.
At a point, the feeder had just oyster shell and the chickens had no access to feed anymore.
They didn't die of overeating oyster shell. Because they were smart enough to not eat it.

 

[K0k0shka]

Never heard of this. Chickens are smarter than most people think.
I used to give my chickens some feed that had oyster shell mixed in.
I quickly switched to a different feed because my chickens weren't eating the oyster shell, therefore clogging the feeder with oyster shell.
At a point, the feeder had just oyster shell and the chickens had no access to feed anymore.
They didn't die of overeating oyster shell. Because they were smart enough to not eat it.

"Never heard of it" is not an argument against something. Just because you haven't come across something in your very narrow personal experience, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. And that statement doesn't negate everybody else's experiences to the contrary. Chickens will eat styrofoam and rusty screws, so their smarts are not to be trusted when it comes to deciding what to eat.

 

[ChaosMom]

"Never heard of it" is not an argument against something. Just because you haven't come across something in your very narrow personal experience, doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. And that statement doesn't negate everybody else's experiences to the contrary. Chickens will eat styrofoam and rusty screws, so their smarts are not to be trusted when it comes to deciding what to eat.

So this raises an interesting dilemma. Many, if not most, commercial feeds already include grit. (At any rate, my Kalmbach Chickhouse Reserve does.)

So do we provide grit, or no?

 

[tlcmurphy]

So this raises an interesting dilemma. Many, if not most, commercial feeds already include grit. (At any rate, my Kalmbach Chickhouse Reserve does.)

So do we provide grit, or no?

I don’t see that it’s included in the feed you mentioned, and I haven’t seen it included in other feeds. Are you certain?
We provide grit and oyster shell separately, but he birds eat very little grit.

 

[ChaosMom]

I don’t see that it’s included in the feed you mentioned, and I haven’t seen it included in other feeds. Are you certain?
We provide grit and oyster shell separately, but he birds eat very little grit.

Thanks, I’ll look again. It was listed on something I have.

 

[ChaosMom]

I don’t see that it’s included in the feed you mentioned, and I haven’t seen it included in other feeds. Are you certain?
We provide grit and oyster shell separately, but he birds eat very little grit.

There it is! Whew.

 

[tlcmurphy]

Some folks will sprinkle grit on chick’s feed instead of having it separate. I wouldn’t mix it with adult feed though

 

[ChaosMom]

Some folks will sprinkle grit on chick’s feed instead of having it separate. I wouldn’t mix it with adult feed though

They are still technically chicks, but they’re 11 1/2 weeks old and HUGE (to me, anyway.)

It’s more than a bit irritating to a noob like me that “chick” covers everything from wet from the egg to day before they lay. I don’t need these extra challenges!