Sand for the chickens

I came across a blog written by a "chicken chick" in which she talked about using sand in chicken coops instead of pine shavings.  She went through the pros and the cons of both and then also talked about how chickens need to eat parts of the sand for grit, which is necessary in their digestive systems.

Cleaning a coop with sand sounded like cleaning a kitty litter box, which was far easier and cleaner than what I'd been doing to clean the pine shavings.  I decided to make the switch.

It was bad timing on my part because sand bags are sold out at every store I went to or called because of Hurricane Sandy.  I posted on Craigslist that I was looking for some once people were done with them from the storm.  A few days went by and I found someone who was giving them away on Craigslist and luckily he waited until I was able to get off work to get them.

It was a long drive home with about 700 pounds of sand weighing the back of my SUV down and it was a heavy load hauling them up the little hill to the chicken coop and chicken run... But things looked better immediately and the guinea ran over and started rolling in the sand as soon as I walked away.

Birds need "dust baths" to clean themselves.  They roll in the dirt or sand and then shake it off and any bugs that might be on them will come off too.  That's exactly what they were doing.  Several of the chickens also ran over and started picking at the sand and eating the parts they wanted.

She actually wanted IN the coop with the guinea!

It just LOOKS cleaner already.

Odd angle, the best I could do - those eggs are from the last 24 hours :)

And now we just wait for her to lay our first egg in the sand :)