What is Poultry Grit and Why Do Your Chickens Need It

What is it?

Poultry grit is small granules of rock that are supplemented into the feed to help your chickens digest their food.

Why do they need it?

Poultry grit helps your chickens have better digestion.  Imagine a small piece of hard dry corn in the gizzard of a chicken and the gizzard grinding away trying to break-up this hard piece of corn.  Now imagine little bits of grit stuck in the chicken gizzard and what it would do to the corn as it grinds away.

If you have chickens that are caged like we do and they are unable to completely free range, they may not be getting enough hard material stored in their gizzards to properly digest their food.

Better digestion = more eggs and healthier chickens.

Chickens can pick up a lot of the needed grit just from foraging, so if your chickens are truly free range you probably don’t need it.

Check this video out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why we give it to our chickens

We feed our girls a combination of Purina Layena pellets and as a treat they also get gamecock feed.  Gamecock feed is much higher in protein than typical chicken feed and comes with a different consistency.  This consistency can a problem though.

The top photo is gamecock feed and the bottom photo is layer pellets. The gamecock feed is full of hard corn, whole grains, and seeds while the pellets dissolve when they hit the chicken’s gizzard; the gamecock feed is much harder to digest thus the need for poultry grit.

Do you use poultry grit? Share in the comments below and thanks for visiting. 

Photo Credit: Community Chickens