5 chick brooder beddings tested: My chicks chose their favorite
After learning that pine shavings—my former brooder bedding material of choice—are actually incredibly unsafe for young chicks, I had no choice but to find a suitable alternative.
So, one of my goals, when I brooded chicks this year, was to find out which bedding materials are safe for chicks and which bedding materials chicks actually want to be brooded on.
Unlike grown chickens, who sleep up on roosting bars at night, chicks actually do bed on their bedding. They don’t just use their bedding for litter as adults do. They also use it to sleep on.
This means that bedding that’s suitable for older chickens (who roost, not bed) isn’t necessarily the best for chicks.
There are 5 bedding materials appropriate for chicks: aspen shavings, hemp, shredded paper, medium- to coarse-grained sand, and chopped straw. Chicks prefer to bed on shredded paper over all other bedding materials.
However, although chicks prefer paper bedding for comfort, they do prefer other bedding materials for different activities—more on this below!
In this post, you’ll learn how the 5 safe bedding options stack up against each other in terms of:
Cleanliness
Dustiness
Ease of use
Price
And, best of all, chick preferences!
Or, just watch the video below to see the experiment in action:
You can see the results summarized in the table below:
This post contains affiliate links for my favorite products from Amazon and Chewy. As an Amazon and Chewy Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
Bedding materials not safe for chicks
Many commonly used bedding types aren’t safe for chicks. For example, see my articles:
The 5 bedding materials safe for chicks
So, after doing loads of research, I found the safest 5 bedding materials available. These materials are:
Medium- to coarse-grained sand
If you click on the links above, you’ll see the exact bedding products I purchased for this test.
How I tested chick bedding materials
I wanted to test the different bedding materials simultaneously so I could see the chicks actually choose which bedding materials they wanted to be brooded on.
So, I purchased an 8 ft by 8 ft camping tent to use as a brooder. (For more on using a camping tent for a brooder, see my article, Camping tent chick brooder: The best brooder in the entire world.)
My husband built a wooden frame for the floor of the brooder with spaces for bedding.
You can see in the photo below what my setup originally looked like.
I originally was testing out two different types of shredded paper—this is why there were 6 spaces instead of 5. But the two papers ended up being almost identical, so I combined them and I’m treating them as the same here. The remaining 6th space I covered with a wooden platform where I placed their brooder plate.
You can see what my brooder platform looks like in the photo below.
I then made observations on my chicks’ behaviors in the different bedding types. I also rotated feeders, waterers, and toys around the different bedding materials to make sure chicks weren’t just hanging around one bedding type because of the goodies I’d placed there.
The cleanest bedding
Winner: Sand
Loser: Aspen shavings
There’s no competition here. Sand is simply a world above all other bedding types when it comes to cleanliness. This is largely because sand is gritty, inorganic, and dries out quickly.
So, if you or your chicks spill water (or your waterer leaks), the sand will dry out quickly, whereas other bedding types hold onto the moisture. And the same thing with chick poop—the poop dries incredibly quickly in the sand, whereas it takes a good deal of time to dry out in all other bedding types.
And if you use sand, say goodbye to poopy chick feet covered in bedding. Yeah, that can happen in every other bedding type. But if your chicks step in poop in the sand, the poop not only dries quickly but also gets wiped off quickly by the friction caused by walking around in gritty sand.
Out of the inorganic bedding materials, the shredded paper was the cleanest because it’s so incredibly absorbent. Think toilet paper—would you rather use paper to clean up or a handful of straw or wood shavings? Same with chick poop. The paper handles it best.
Aspen shavings score the worst on cleanliness because they just don’t absorb the moisture that well. However, they really aren’t much worse than the straw or hemp, so I wouldn’t discount them based solely on that.
The least-dusty bedding
Winner: Paper
Loser: Sand
Dustiness can be a problem in brooders when you first put your bedding in, when you take it out, and when your chicks forage and dust bathe in it.
When it comes to low dustiness, shredded paper wins by a mile. This is the only bedding material that is essentially dust-free. Aspen shavings are also very low in dustiness. The other three bedding materials are considerably higher.
You can see how the materials compare in relative dustiness in the table below:
Best ease-of-use bedding
Winner: Paper
Loser: Sand
All of the organic beddings are easy to use and fairly similar in that regard. They’re all lightweight and compostable. If you don’t want to compost them, you can easily burn them or throw them away.
I suppose if I had to choose the bedding with the best ease of use, it would be paper, simply because it’s lighter weight than the rest. Also, because it’s dust-free, it doesn’t make you cough when you move it into and out of your brooder.
Sand, on the other hand, not so easy.
Using sand has the following problems:
Hard to find—Not any old sand will work as some can cause major health problems
Hard to sanitize—You don’t want chicks to be exposed to sand that’s been in the open for wild animals to poop on, so you need to clean it before use
Hard to move around—Very heavy to maneuver if your brooder’s large
Hard to get rid of—You’ve got to dump it somewhere, maybe just in your yard, but that’s not a solution for everyone
I’ll be writing an article very soon on how you can sanitize sand for your brooder. But in the meantime, if you’re interested in how to find the right type of sand and how to use it, check out my articles:
Sand for chicken coop bedding: Pros, cons, and how to do it right
Will all sand bedding kill your chickens? Silica and silicosis explained
Best-priced bedding
Winner: Sand
Loser: Chopped straw
Check out the table below to see how much different bedding materials cost (in $/10L bedding). I calculated these costs directly from the materials I purchased. Your local costs may vary considerably, depending on supply.
*Cost plus delivery fee—without delivery, my sand only cost $0.08 per 10 L.
Sand is definitely the cheapest bedding material, especially if you don’t have to get it delivered. If you have a smaller brooder, you could use sandbags to transport your sand from the gravel company to your home. And if you have your own truck, you could transport it in your truck bed.
If I were to pick up sand that way from my local gravel company here in Horseshoe Bend, my sand would cost only $0.08/10 L. However, because I’ve always had the sand delivered (I use it in my coops and runs so I need a lot), it ends up costing me $0.45/10 L. This is still considerably cheaper than any other bedding material.
The most expensive bedding material is chopped straw. Non-chopped straw is considerably cheaper, but it’s not suitable for chicks as they have a very difficult time walking on it.
Chick preferences for bedding materials
The truth is my chicks loved all the bedding materials I gave them and they spent a considerable amount of time in each bedding. However, my chicks clearly preferred certain bedding materials over others for particular activities.
Most comfortable bedding (as judged by my chicks)
Winner: Paper
Loser: Uncertain
The chicks clearly spent more time in the paper bedding than any other type. I would estimate they chose to sit, lay, or preen in paper bedding about 7 times out of 10 when they weren’t active. They also spent a lot of active time in the paper as well, especially when they were very young.
The other bedding types were pretty evenly used. The aspen shavings definitely felt a bit uncomfortable to me because they’re so rigid and rough, but the chicks still seemed to like them.
Best bedding for foraging (as judged by my chicks)
Winner: Hemp
Loser: Uncertain
My chicks loved to forage and scratch around in all the bedding materials, vigorously kicking bedding everywhere. But they were insane about the hemp bedding. They seriously acted like cats playing with catnip. They could not get enough of the hemp bedding.
I always caught them actively foraging in the hemp bedding, and twittering happily. Their energy levels were much higher when foraging in the hemp vs. other bedding materials.
Chopped straw was their next favorite.
Best bedding for dustbathing (as judged by my chicks)
Winner: Sand
Loser: Every other bedding
Not surprisingly, my chicks always chose sand for dust bathing as sand was the only fine-grained and gritty bedding in the brooder. My chicks spent countless hours dust bathing happily in the sand.
So what is the best chick bedding for your brooder?
If I only cared about my needs (like cleanliness), I would choose sand in a heartbeat. But when I consider my chicks’ needs, I think the shredded paper is the best option for most brooders.
Very high in cleanliness, affordability, and ease of use—and preferred by chicks for resting on—you can’t go wrong with paper. Additionally, my chicks enjoyed foraging in the paper and spent more time on the paper than any other bedding.
However, the other types of bedding tested were also unbridled successes. So, as long as you choose a bedding material from one of these 5 types—aspen shavings, hemp, shredded paper, medium- to coarse-grained sand, or chopped straw—your chicks will be very happy and healthy little babies!
And if you really want to spoil them—use more than one bedding material as I did! My chicks loved to alternate which type of bedding they played in. You could divide your brooder into different areas that use different bedding materials, even if you only use one or two additional materials.
Or, if you don’t want to keep more than one bedding in your brooder at a time, you could always switch one out for another periodically too.