Cedar Wood Shavings For Chickens

The most common kinds of shavings are pine and cedar although there is a lot of talk about the possibility of cedar being toxic to chickens.

Cedar wood shavings for chickens.

I love to use shavings due to odor control and ease of cleaning. Easily attainable shavings can be picked up at local feed stores. This is not a myth it s backed up by very strong evidence. It is much easier to clean shavings than it is to clean knotted wet straw.

Go for large flake wood shavings over fine shavings too dusty and don t use sawdust way too dusty and damp. Wood shavings are a really good option for chicken coop bedding. Not much oil or sap left at all. Great odor control.

First of all many people use cedar shavings and have no problems but we use only pine shavings. We have used cedar shavings and pine shavings for laying boxes as well as scattered fairly thick on the floor for years and have never seen any signs that it affected the birds however most cedar and pine shavings are mostly dry anyway. Easy to clean shavings can be fluffed and forked up much easier than straw bedding. Cedar bedding is not safe for chickens due to the damaging effects of plicatic acid on chickens respiratory systems the damaging effects of terpene hydrocarbons and aromatic compounds on chickens livers and the carcinogenic nature of cedar dust.

See my article on why you should never use cedar in your coop for more information. Cedar shavings chips give off fumes that may kill some poultry parasites but they are also toxic to chickens. And even worse they don t even have to eat the the shavings or breathe the oil s fumes for it to hurt them. But because cedar toxicity has been commonly accepted for at least decades this finding wasn t really that surprising to me.

Sun colored straw with its sweet earthy smell and springy texture is what many new chicken keepers reach for to line their. I had actually never considered giving my chickens pine needles in their nesting boxings or their coop until we moved to our new. You absolutely need pine wood shavings and not cedar shavings cedar oils and scent can be toxic to chickens. Cedar shavings are incredibly toxic to chickens.