Author: Anna & Mark

Chicken
coop bedding is something we’ve experimented with over the years.



Straw, sawdust, and bags of
leaves are our current favorites, mainly because we like to use it as
top dressing for our fruit trees once the chickens deposit their
“gifts” and it needs changing.



One material we have not
tried yet is sand. If you don’t have fruit trees to feed, sand might be
worth trying if you want to keep the coop as clean as possible. I never
considered it until I recently read the Chicken
Chick’s excellent blog post on how she discovered the merits of
sand as a coop bedding material. It’s a lot like cleaning a litter box
for a cat. Scoop troubled areas once a day for best results.

“I understand that chickens like to eat fresh greens and that providing
them some greens in the winter is a good thing.  I have some wheat
grass that grows easily for me in my kitchen during the winter. 
Is this ok to give to the chickens?  Is there anything (plant
greens) that I should be careful NOT to give the chickens?”

—Jenni & my 8 yr old son “the chicken whisperer” Riley

Chickens do love fresh greens, and it’s great for their health to have
access to some in the winter. 
I haven’t fed chickens wheatgrass myself, but the internet is full of
reports of other chicken-owners doing so.  It seems like the best
method is to plant the wheatgrass in trays topped with hardware
cloth.  After the green tops reach a certain height, you can put
one tray in the coop, and chickens will eat the greenery down to the
wire.  Then you take that tray out to put in a sunny windowsill and
regrow while the chickens are consuming a second tray.  Another
method is to simply cut the wheatgrass tops off yourself and dump those
directly into the coop.



To answer your second
question, chickens seem to be pretty good at picking around anything
poisonous, so I wouldn’t be particularly worried about giving them
something that will hurt them.  As long as they have access to
plenty of food and aren’t starving, chances are they’ll just turn up
their noses (beaks) at anything that doesn’t taste good.



(Click on the photo to see the source and to learn more about how to grow wheatgrass.)