Pine Shavings in the Coop: The Secret Chicken Killer?
Pine shavings are one of the most-used chicken bedding materials in the United States. They’re used in both brooders and chicken coops. They’re loved for their absorbency, cheap cost, insulating properties, and composting ease.
Pine shavings are touted as safe for chickens’ health, and many packages even have pictures of chickens on them. I myself have bought the shavings pictured here straight off of Amazon!
I gave up pine shavings and swapped them for sand a while ago, simply because I didn’t like the amount of dust the shavings created. I worried that if the dust made me feel unwell, it may be making my chickens feel unwell also. So I switched my bedding, and never thought about pine shavings again.
Until now. Recently, I’d noticed that a lot of people had started using cedar shavings in their coops, saying that cedar toxicity to chickens is a myth, so I decided to look into it. I spent days poring over the scientific literature, and what I found horrified me—not just about cedar, but also about pine.
Cedar shavings are incredibly toxic to chickens. This is not a myth—it’s backed up by very strong evidence. But because cedar toxicity has been commonly accepted for at least decades, this finding wasn’t really that surprising to me. (See my article on Why you should never use cedar in your coop for more information).
What was surprising to me, was that during my research, I found that cedar isn’t the only bedding toxic to animals (and people, for that matter). Pine shavings are toxic as well.
Why are pine shavings unsafe for your chickens? Pine bedding is unsafe for chickens due to the damaging effects of abietic acid on the respiratory system, the damaging effects of terpene hydrocarbons and aromatic compounds on liver function, and the carcinogenic nature of pine dust.
Long-term exposure to pine can cause mild to severe illness in chickens, and possibly death.
In this article, I’ve summarized the findings of many of the major academic studies about the toxicity of pine shavings, including:
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Pine Shavings Toxicity Studies and Chickens
Unfortunately, all of the research on pine shavings toxicity has been conducted on mammals, not chickens. It’s very easy to understand why chickens have been left out.
Chicken research is done almost solely on industry chickens that either don’t live on bedding (laying hens) or are killed in a matter of weeks or months (broilers), so the long-term effects of pine shavings toxicity don’t matter. The chickens are slaughtered before serious problems surface.
Using pine shavings in the short term, as much of the chicken industry does, in no way affects the industry’s bottom line. Pine-induced illness occurs slowly and gradually. Short-term effects, such as nasal irritation, respiratory discomfort, and increases in liver enzymes, are relatively minor, and may not even be visible to caretakers.
The long-term effects of pine-induced illness, such as asthma, liver damage, and cancer, may take months or even years to develop, much longer than the life of a broiler chicken.
This means that if you are raising your chickens for slaughter, and you don’t plan on having them around for long, then you can probably get away with using pine shavings. However, just know that your chickens’ will likely be living a lower quality of life.
If you are like me, on the other hand, and you are raising your chickens as pets, wanting them to live long and happy lives, using pine shavings is a huge mistake.
Pine shavings toxicity studies and mammals
So, if pine shavings toxicity isn’t studied in the chicken world, why is it studied in the mammal world?
The reason that pine bedding toxicity has been studied in mammals is twofold:
Pine is toxic to humans, and therefore deemed necessary to study. Some woodworkers and sawmill workers exposed to pine dust get serious respiratory problems, and some get cancer (more on this below).
Experimentation on small mammals is done to advance human medical science, so scientists need to be absolutely certain that management factors, like bedding toxicity, aren’t affecting their results.
The second reason above is how we even know that pine shavings bedding is toxic. Interestingly, if rodents weren’t used in medical experimentation, rodent owners would be just as in the dark about the toxicity of pine to their pets as we are about it with our chickens.
Do mammal studies on pine shavings toxicity apply to chickens?
The results of the mammal studies very likely apply to chickens as well. There are many reasons to believe they do.
Chickens have incredibly sensitive respiratory systems, and they are very susceptible to respiratory illness and damage (Damerow, 2015). Because many of the problems caused by pine shavings are respiratory in nature, it would be extremely surprising if chickens were somehow immune to them.
Let’s just take a look for a minute at one of the ways pine causes illness, and think about it in terms of a chicken’s anatomy.
When an animal inhales the abietic acid in pine (one of the main toxins), it damages the airway. Epithelial, tracheal, and lung cells disintegrate and slough off (Ayars et al., 1989). The sensitive respiratory tissues in chickens almost certainly would be affected the same way. There is no logical reason to think that these same cells in a chicken would be resilient.
In addition, many chicken keepers have told stories about their chickens experiencing respiratory distress when they tried pine in their coops. For example, one of my favorite chicken gurus, Lisa Steele of the Fresh Eggs Daily blog, shared her story of trying pine in the coop here. She said:
“Within two days, I had three chickens with respiratory problems. They were breathing with difficulty, one was braying almost like a donkey and squeaking in between breaths… I immediately suspected that the shavings were the culprit.”
Lisa acknowledges that she isn’t 100% sure the pine shavings caused the respiratory issues. She said nothing else had changed for her chickens besides the new pine bedding, so she couldn’t think of what else could be causing the respiratory problems. Additionally, she said the problems subsided when she removed the pine shavings.
This is just one of many similar stories. Although these are just anecdotes, and should not be taken as proof of pine toxicity, they can be helpful when scientific studies specifically on chickens aren’t available.
What makes pine toxic to animals?
One of the most toxic chemicals in pine is abietic acid, which is the primary irritant in pine wood. Abietic acid is the culprit in many of the respiratory symptoms of pine-induced illness. Additionally, abietic acid and its oxidation products can cause airborne contact dermatitis (Hausen et al., 1989; The MAK-Collection for Occupational Health and Safety, 2013)
The chemicals responsible for causing liver stress and damage in animals are most likely the terpene hydrocarbons and aromatic compounds in pine (Miyamoto et al., 2008; Li et al., 2009).
Other constituents of pine may harm animals as well, but very little research has been done on other chemicals.
Potgieter and Wilke (1993) have noted that “the presence of natural organic substances, such as α- and β-pinene, champhene, limonene, terpinolene, myrcene, β-phelandrene, resin acids (pimaric, sandaracopimaric, palustric, levopimaric, isopimaric, abietic, dehydroabietic, neoabietic), turpentine, and rosin (rosin or pine wood resin is a complex mixture of closely related diterpene acids), could still adversely modify the experimental model.”
When researchers say “the experimental model,” they are referring to experiments done on rodents. They’re basically saying that any of these chemicals in pine bedding could potentially harm the rodents or alter their biological functions in some way, and thereby unknowingly affect the results of medical experiments.
The worry is that if rodents are harmed during experiments, researchers may mistakenly attribute the harm to whatever drug they are testing, rather than simply to the presence of pine bedding in the cage.
How do chickens get exposed to toxic chemicals in pine?
The main method of exposure is through inhalation. Very fine pine wood particles are inhaled. Once inhaled, they may cause damage to the respiratory system, liver, and nasal cavity.
Because all pine shavings contain fine dust, it does not matter how well ventilated your chicken coop is. Your chickens will still be exposed to an unimaginable quantity of tiny particles in your coop.
What are the signs and symptoms of respiratory illness caused by pine dust?
Exposure to pine dust can cause a wide range of signs and symptoms, including:
Shortness of breath
Nasal irritation
Eye irritation
Throat irritation
Flu-like symptoms
Chronic bronchitis
Wheezing
Coughing
Airflow obstruction
Chest tightness
Reduced lung function
Contact dermatitis
Asthma
Rhinitis-like reactions with or without asthma
(from Whitehead et al., 1981; Pisaniello et al., 1991; Shamssain, M., 1992; Halpin et al., 1994; Hessel et al., 1995; Demers et al., 1997; The MAK-Collection for Occupational Health and Safety, 2013)
For more information on these symptoms, see the review on soft wood (including pine) dust toxicity in Demers et al. (1997). These scientists thoroughly reviewed the research to date, and found that:
“… exposure-related airflow obstruction and respiratory symptoms are observed with both ‘allergenic’ and ‘nonallergenic’ wood dusts, including common species such as pine, spruce, and fir.”
They continued, “Furthermore, airflow obstruction and both upper and lower respiratory tract symptoms, such as nasal irritation, chronic bronchitis, and shortness of breath, have been observed in multiple studies…”
What exactly does pine do to the body?
Abietic acid in pine and its effects on the respiratory system
When abietic acid from pine wood is inhaled, it destroys the cells in the airway and lungs (Ayars et al., 1989). When human and rat alveolar epithelial cells, rat lungs, and tracheal tissues were exposed to abietic acid, the solution caused cell disintegration and sloughing.
Terpenes and aromatic compounds in pine and their effects on liver function
Numerous studies show that both pine and cedar bedding drastically increase hepatic microsomal enzyme activities and are cytotoxic to the liver (e.g., Vesell, 1967; Cunliffe-Beamer, 1981; Törrönen et al., 1989; Connors et al., 1990; Potgieter et al., 1995; Pelkonen and Hänninen, 1997).
Others have found that the chemicals in pine bedding also alter aspects of endocytosis (Buddaraju and Van Dyke, 2003).
What exactly causes these alarming changes? As one government document says of both pine and cedar, the damage is caused by “the volatile aromatic amines that give these materials their pleasant aroma” (Carter and Lipman, 2018).
So you know that wonderful pine smell you get when you first put shavings in your coop? The same compounds responsible for that amazing aroma are going to potentially really hurt your chickens.
What a disappointment, huh?
Some of the first studies to reveal the harmful effects of pine bedding on the liver were conducted by Vesell (1967, 1968). Vesell found that drug-metabolizing enzymes were increased in rats and mice kept on bedding of cedar or pine shavings.
The changes in liver enzyme activity began within 24 hours of the rodents being placed on the softwood bedding materials (pine and cedar). Liver enzyme activity was approximately 2 times higher in rodents when they were on pine or cedar vs. when they were on hardwood bedding materials (beech, birch, and maple).
A more recent study found that many of the enzymes affected by pine shavings bedding stayed elevated for at least 6 weeks after the animals were removed from the pine (Davey et al., 2003).
In yet another study, a research team put some of their mice on pine shavings to purposely increase their liver enzyme activity (Connors et al., 1990). They then euthanized the animals, exposed slices of their livers to cocaine, and then tested the level of damage to the liver cells.
The mice that had been housed on pine shavings had significantly more damage to their livers than those that weren’t housed on pine. You can see that livers from animals who have been exposed to pine shavings are much more susceptible to damage from additional stressors.
Although our chickens will never be exposed to cocaine, many will be exposed to other toxins or opportunistic pathogens at some time. If your chickens are living on pine shavings, they likely won’t be able to fight these pathogens as effectively.
Another study exposed mouse cells to pine extracts and found the pine was cytotoxic to the cells, meaning that pine actually causes cell death (Törrönen et al., 1989).
I’ve provided here a small sampling of the myriad of studies that have shown that pine shavings can be toxic to the livers of small animals. There are dozens more examples like these.
Can pine shavings cause death?
I don’t know if pine shavings toxicity is bad enough to kill your chickens over time, but it certainly could be. Cedar shavings have been shown to cause death in small animals (Burkhart and Robinson, 1978), but pine is less toxic than cedar.
Pine shavings have been suggested to have caused death in small rabbits (Harriman et al., 1989), but this study was conducted informally by an animal foster society in conjunction with vets, and was never peer reviewed.
It all started when a fostering society in California unexpectedly lost an 18-month old rabbit, Sarah. Her necropsy (i.e., the animal version of an autopsy) showed she had liver damage, which was a big surprise to them.
Shortly after Sarah’s death, another one of their rabbits died. This rabbit had suffered from a mysterious degenerative illness. The rabbit’s necropsy showed it had severe liver disease, and that this was likely the major contributor to its death.
The foster society, now feeling very alarmed, conducted blood screenings on some of their other foster rabbits and on family rabbits. They found a large number of the rabbits had elevated liver enzymes.
These elevated liver enzymes indicated that the animals’ livers were not able to process toxins sufficiently.
The foster society found that every single one of the rabbits who had liver problems were being exposed to pine shavings. They were either housed on pine shavings or they were using pine shavings as litter.
The foster society removed these rabbits’ pine shavings for a month, and then retested their blood. The liver enzyme measurements had all gone back to within the normal range.
The foster society then informally surveyed rabbit owners all over the country who had reported their rabbits had died of liver disease. All owners answered that they had been using softwood shavings (cedar or pine) for their rabbits.
The authors concluded:
“Although our data do not qualify as a truly scientific experiment, there is enough evidence to suggest using caution… The fact that a large number of indoor house rabbits live in an environment of pine or cedar may account for the large number of deaths due to liver damage and anesthesia fatalities.”
One of the things that’s interesting about this study is that nobody would have known these rabbits died of liver disease or with liver damage if necropsies hadn’t been done.
Many backyard and homestead chickens die of unexpected causes. It makes me wonder if long-term exposure to pine shavings may contribute to some of these deaths. Unfortunately, there is just not enough evidence to know.
Can pine bedding cause cancer?
The International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies pine dust as a carcinogen.
Several studies document that workers exposed to pine have a much higher rate of cancer, particularly cancer that affects the nasal passages and glottis (e.g., Hernberg et al., 1983; Voss et al., 1985; Boysen et al., 1986; Maier et al, 1992; see Demers et al., 1997 for a full review).
Pine shavings bedding and chickens: Addressing arguments against toxicity
Near the beginning of this article, I made an argument for why pine shavings are likely just as toxic to chickens as they are to other animals. I won’t revisit that here.
However, I know I’m going to get a lot of push back on this because pine shavings are so popular and so widely used, and they’ve been part of chicken keeping for so long. I’ve already come across a lot of arguments people are using against pine shavings toxicity, and I’m going to address those here.
I hope to convince you that none of these arguments against pine shavings toxicity is valid.
Argument #1: The broiler industry uses pine shavings, so they must be safe. They’d never expose chickens to something toxic if they’d lose money over it.
I already addressed this above, but I’ll mention it briefly again here. Chickens in the broiler industry don’t live long enough to suffer the great harms of pine toxicity.
Similarly, if you are raising chickens to slaughter in a couple of months or even a couple of years, you could probably get away with using pine shavings and have few, if any, problems. Your chickens, however, would likely live a lower quality of life.
Additionally, I’d like to point out one particularly interesting study that shows how hard it is to change tried-and-true habits when it comes to animal husbandry. When something is embedded in a culture (like using pine shavings), even top-notch scientific institutions, who should know better, have a hard time changing their protocols.
This is what a research team in South Africa found when they obtained bedding types from academic institutions all over the world, including from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, England, Germany, France, China, and Japan (Pelkonen and Hänninen, 1997).
The bedding materials the team procured were the exact materials the institutions were using to rear the rodents that they used for their biomedical research.
The team tested the cytotoxicity and inducer activity of all these bedding types using the Hepa-1 in vitro-assay process.
Not surprisingly, all of the pine beddings used were highly cytotoxic (i.e., causing cell death) to liver cells. More surprisingly, despite the fact that the cytotoxicity of pine on rodents had been known for 30 years (at the time this study was done), many research institutions were still using it.
In the authors’ own words:
“The present study shows that materials with high cytotoxic potency are still unexpectedly commonly used as rodent contact bedding in laboratories all over the world… Numerous respectable institutes seem still to be unaware of the risks of using softwood bedding, although non-toxic alternatives exist.”
Old habits die hard—it’s a saying for a reason. When methods are ingrained in a culture or institution, like using pine shavings for bedding, it can be very difficult to change those methods, even when they have been proven to be hazardous.
I fear this will be the case with pine shavings in the chicken world as well.
Argument #2: But a chicken authority figure I trust [name your favorite chicken guru here] says pine shavings are safe!
Every chicken authority figure I follow thinks pine shavings are safe, but they haven’t looked at the research. Many of them don’t have access to academic libraries, so poring over the research is exceedingly difficult for them. Many of them also don’t have the skill set necessary for research science.
And to be fair, all of us in the chicken-raising world have simply taken it for granted that pine shavings are a good and safe bedding. That’s why it’s so important to spread the word now.
You also could substitute “My grandmother” above for your favorite chicken guru. Many people make this argument from tradition—“If it was good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.” I feel sentimental about my grandmother too, but we need to leave this argument behind. They didn’t know about this research either (and much of it hadn’t even been done in my grandma’s day as a farm girl).
Argument #3: I have a well-ventilated coop so my chickens are safe on pine.
People love this one. And I really wish this one were true, but it’s just not. Yes, more ventilation is better than less ventilation, but your chickens are still going to be exposed to millions or billions of tiny dust particles. The particles don’t just magically get sucked out of the coop with good ventilation, as much as we would love that to be true.
When I first got chickens, I used pine shavings for a full year (I had no idea they were toxic). My coop is incredibly well ventilated, much more so than average, but I still had dust everywhere.
I couldn’t always see it, but I always suffered the effects of it—itchy nose, irritated sinuses, watery eyes, coughing, phlegm, and uncomfortable inhalation. I am apparently super sensitive to pine—my husband didn’t react like this. He said it just “kind of” bothered him.
The point is—the dust is there, whether you realize it or not. It doesn’t matter if you’re not sensitive to it. Your chickens are getting exposed.
Don’t forget that your chickens’ noses are much closer to the bedding than yours is. They are getting more exposure to the dust than you are in your coop. Every time they walk across their bedding, they are kicking up bits of dust and inhaling some of it.
When I had pine in my coop, some of my hens even insisted on dust bathing in it. They just couldn’t help themselves. It doesn’t matter that they had excellent dust bathing spots right outside the coop. Sometimes they just want to use the bedding—who has time to go outside when the need to dust bathe arises? Chickens live in the moment—one of the many beautiful things about them.
I of course hated that my chickens would dust bathe in the bedding because the bedding had poop in it. Now I realize just how dangerous that dust bathing actually was for them. The poop isn’t the problem—the pine is. The poop is gross; the pine is hazardous. Dust bathing chickens get a very heavy dose of pine dust as they literally bathe themselves in toxic compounds and carcinogens.
Let’s also remember that the humans who get sick from pine dust are typically those working at sawmills (Demers et al., 1997). Many of these men work outside. This means these men were out in the great outdoors—which is certainly better ventilated than your chicken coop—and they still got sick.
Argument #4: But kiln drying removes the harmful chemicals from pine.
Not so. The purpose of kiln drying is to remove water, not abietic acid and other harmful substances. Kiln drying does cause the extracts in pine to migrate within the wood, but it doesn’t remove them (Myronycheva et al., 2018). Perhaps some amount may be lost under some conditions (I don’t think this has been tested yet), but many of the dangerous chemicals are still present.
Unfortunately, not a lot of work has been done on the effects of kiln drying on specific chemicals in pine. However, researchers have tried to remove the dangerous chemicals in cedar through autoclaving (Cunliffe-Beamer, 1981) and heat treating the wood (Weichbrod et al., 1988), but both methods failed to do so.
The only process that looks promising for removing dangerous chemicals from cedar is a groundbreaking new method called soft hydrothermal-processing (Miyamoto et al., 2008; Li et al., 2009). Experiments are still in early phases, but soft hydrothermal-processing does seem to remove at least some of the terpene hydrocarbons and aromatic compounds responsible for liver stress.
These experiments look promising in removing from cedar (and presumably pine) at least some of the terpene hydrocarbons and aromatic compounds that cause liver problems in animals, but the research unfortunately doesn’t address plicatic or abietic acid at all.
So no one has any idea if soft hydrothermal-processing removes the two most dangerous acids in cedar and pine, plicatic acid and abietic acid, respectively. Additionally, this process doesn’t take away the carcinogenic properties of these woods.
And of course, this is a process that has only been done in scientific laboratories. It has not been adopted by industry, so you will not be able to find bedding for your chickens that has undergone this process.
All pine and cedar bedding available for purchase are toxic.
Argument #5: But I’ve used pine shavings forever, and my chickens are fine!
There are several different possibilities that could be going on here:
Your chickens remain healthy, despite being on pine.
Your chickens are suffering cell damage, but it’s not visible to you.
Some of your chickens may have died from long-term exposure to pine, but you had no way of knowing that this was the cause.
Some of your chickens may be greatly weakened by pine-induced illness, which you can’t see, and this weakness makes them susceptible to other illnesses.
Your pine bedding is less toxic than some other varieties (although all pine shavings are toxic to some degree).
Okay, let’s break these down.
You may have chickens on pine that never get sick.
Not all pine sawmill workers get sick. I couldn’t find what percentage of workers exposed to pine become ill, but for workers exposed to cedar, only 5-25% of them actually get sick (e.g., Chan-Yeung, 1994; Brooks et al., 1981). The concept is similar to smoking—only a minority of smokers, even heavy smokers, actually get sick.
I would think the percentage of chickens who are affected by pine toxicity would be higher than the percentage of humans. This is simply because chickens have sensitive respiratory systems, are much smaller and less robust, and have a lot more exposure (chickens spend all night, every night in the coop).
I also do not know if every animal exposed to pine has liver problems, but it seems from the studies that most, if not all, experience at least some liver stress.
The scary thing is that if your chickens have liver problems, you may never know.
They might not show symptoms at all, and the symptoms they do show are typically so generic, they could be caused by anything. You’d only know their livers were damaged if you did necropsies after they died or certain blood tests. I do necropsies on my chickens, but I don’t think most people do.
And that takes us to our next possibility of why your chickens are “fine.” You just can’t see that they’re not fine. They are suffering cell damage, but still functioning.
When your chickens have suffered enough damage to show noticeable symptoms, you may not ever suspect the pine bedding. Afterall, you’ve used it forever and never had a problem. Because chickens will likely only get sick in the long-term (unless they are especially sensitive), it won’t be obvious to you that the pine shavings are the culprit.
Similarly, when chickens are suffering from pine-induced illness, they are likely to be more susceptible to catching other illnesses. So you could have a chicken die of another illness, and even know exactly what that illness is. But you would likely still miss the point entirely that the reason your chicken couldn’t fight off that other illness was because she was weakened by a slow poisoning of pine.
The last possibility is that your pine shavings are less toxic than some others, so your chickens’ illnesses are progressing more slowly. There are a few things that could potentially play into how toxic your pine is.
For one, different species of pine may be more or less toxic than others. A really interesting study tested the toxicity of pine shavings bedding used in laboratories all over the world (Pelkonen and Hänninen, 1997). The research team found that some pine bedding was significantly more toxic than others.
Even so, the most important takeaway of that study is this:
“The present study showed that the extracts of pine shavings of different geographic origin all are both highly toxic and rich in inducers...”
All pine bedding is highly toxic, even if some types are drastically worse than others.
Another way some pine shavings may be more toxic than others has to do with the kiln drying process. When pine is kiln-dried, the extracts in it, including abietic acid and other dangerous chemicals, migrate (Myronycheva et al., 2018). The surface of the wood ends up with very high levels of extracts, and the core has lower levels.
Depending on which part of the wood your shavings are coming from, your pine may be more or less toxic than average.
Why Take a Chance with Your Chickens?
You may feel skeptical about the arguments I’ve made here, especially since this is probably the first time you’ve heard them, but the research here is solid. There is very strong evidence that pine shavings are unsafe for your chickens.
You may even feel defensive because you have housed or are housing your chickens on pine. This is a totally natural reaction. Please know that I’m not saying that you are bad or don’t care about your chickens. I used pine too. We all thought it was safe.
It’s not your fault if your pine shavings bedding has harmed your chickens today or in the past. But you now have a choice to make, and you can choose to prevent this harm from happening to your chickens in the future.
If you’re not sure what else to use for bedding, consider chopped straw or sand. Check out my articles, Using straw in your chicken coop and Using sand in your chicken coop for help.
(And if you’ve heard the common myth that sand will kill your chickens, check out my article, Will sand bedding kill your chickens? Silica and silicosis explained.)
I’m a sand gal myself, but it’s not for everyone. One of the nice things about straw is that even if you don’t have easy access to it, you can order straw here on Amazon. I actually use this exact straw in one of my small coops (although I do plan to move them onto sand soon).
And If you’re absolutely set on wood shavings, aspen is going to be your best choice. It’s not perfect. Aspen is also cytotoxic to the liver (Pelkonen and Hänninen, 1997), induces liver enzyme activity (Törrönen et al., 1989), and has been associated with respiratory symptoms and lung damage (Burn et al., 2006). However, these negative effects are much lower in aspen than they are in pine and cedar.
I still wouldn’t use aspen, but it’s worlds above pine. You can also find Aspen here on Amazon or at your local farm supply store.
Help spread the word about the dangers of pine!
All the books out there are saying that pine shavings are safe. All the blogs out there are saying this too. Even the chicken-keeping authorities we all know and love are saying this. We’ve got to get the word out about all of this research to the contrary.
If you can convince just one person to stop using pine shavings (or, even better, to never start), then you may be saving the lives of some of that person’s chickens, or at least greatly increasing their qualities of life. Even if we all convince only one person, that’s a lot of chickens who won’t be needlessly harmed.
Please share this information with every chicken keeper you know. Hopefully, we can reach a critical mass together, and pine shaving toxicity will become common knowledge.
If we all work hard to spread the word now, maybe we can change this dangerous practice in our generation!
If you don’t know where to start, please share this post on your favorite social media and pin it on Pinterest!
You May Also Be Interested in:
Will sand bedding kill your chickens? Silica and silicosis explained
The BEST luxury coop you’ll ever buy: Spoil your chickens with Rita Marie's
Sand for chicken coop bedding: Pros, cons, and how to do it right
Straw for chicken coop bedding: Pros, cons, and how to do it right
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