The dumb mistake I made with pine shavings for 2 months straight

So I started keeping chickens back in March and I kept noticing my girls were getting these weird little respiratory issues. Not like full blown sick but sneezing and kinda wheezy. I was cleaning their coop every week with fresh pine shavings and thought I was doing everything right. Turns out I was buying the cheap dusty pine shavings from the big box store instead of the kiln dried stuff. That fine dust was getting kicked up every time they scratched around and it was irritating their lungs. Switched over to the screened coarse shavings from a local feed store about 3 weeks ago and the sneezing stopped completely. Anybody else run into this or am I just the only one who didn't think about dust?

2 comments

2 Comments

ellis.susan23d ago

Made that same dusty mistake myself. Felt like a real chicken mom fail.

eva_thompson1023d ago

@ellis.susan the real kicker is that dust baths are actually super important for chickens to keep mites and stuff off. so when you see them rolling around like that, your first instinct is to leave them be. but apparently there's a fine line between "helpful dusting" and "my coop is basically a sandstorm now." i learned the hard way that you gotta actually watch where the dust is accumulating, not just if they're doing it. turns out too much fine dust in their airways is just as bad as no dust at all.