Bedding in the Brooder

Amazingly I have read all kinds of things regarding brooder bedding, the stuff the chickens, walk on, sleep on, oh and poop on. I have now tried several kinds of bedding as well. There is a ton of information about brooder bedding online and all of it seems to contradict one and other. Of course I wanted something free, but apparently newspaper can cause problems with the chicks legs and feet, because it is slick. Some sites suggested hey, some the eco friendly paper type of stuff, and other pine shavings. I started with the eco friendly paper, it was available at the pet store where I purchased the water bottles and claimed to expand to a large volume, mostly I didn't want to drive from store to store to look for anything else when I heard that it would work. Turns out, this stuff is expensive. It didn't expand as much as I would have hoped for and wasn't all that magical when it came to keeping the smell down. We also had problems with it hurting the chicks, once when it was stuck in one chicks eye and once when a strip was wrapped around a chicks toe and seemed to have cut off circulation. So I tried the next thing, the straw. It seemed too slippery, and didn't really absorb the droppings well, it was a better price than the eco paper, but not exactly cheap. After that I moved on to the pine shavings, which has been my favorite so far, and the least expensive. It is easy to use, helps with the chicken smell and so far hasn't endangered my chicks at all.

This post is part of 31 Days- a writing challenge and fifteenth in my baby chick series!