CHICKEN TALK | A BRICK EVERY YEAR!
We humans are absolutely not happy with 'a stone in our stomach,' but for chickens, it's quite different; they need stones in their stomach to properly digest their food.
Chicken talk
25 September '23 • 2 min reading time
The Digestive Process of a Chicken
A chicken has no teeth or molars to break down the ingested feed. The feed is picked up with the beak and immediately swallowed whole; it travels down the esophagus to the crop, which is actually a dilation of the esophagus, where it is soaked for a while. After that, it slides down to the glandular stomach. In the glandular stomach, digestive juices begin to act on the feed, which still retains the same size and structure as when it was ingested.
The Function of the Gizzard
Only in the gizzard, the next phase in the digestive process, is the feed reduced in size, allowing the juices to work more effectively and the feed to be divided into the digestible part and the indigestible remains. This gizzard is a small pouch with a thick muscular wall, lined on the inside with a horn-like, wear-resistant lining. Inside this gizzard are small stones that the chicken regularly ingests. The continuous contraction of the muscles around this gizzard moves the contents (feed and stones), and the stones help to break down and thus reduce the feed. The stones are essentially the teeth and molars of the chicken.
The Importance of Grit
But... those grit stones wear down. Due to all the violence in the gizzard, the stones become smaller until they eventually leave the chicken with the indigestible part of the feed. Instinctively, a chicken knows when it needs to take in fresh grit again. On average, a chicken consumes about 5 grams of grit per day, which amounts to a brick over the course of a year! So make sure your chickens always have access to grit, for example by providing gizzard grit in a separate container. Chickens that have enough opportunities to forage, such as in the garden, will also pick up stones, but I would still recommend offering these chickens grit in a container just to be safe. For chickens with limited foraging opportunities, it is a must.
Gravel versus grit
For clarity; gravel is not grit. Grit consists of ground shells that are crushed in the gizzard in no time. They do not play a role in food reduction but serve as an extra source of calcium. You provide grit to your chickens if you suspect, for example, because they are regularly laying wind eggs (without a calcium shell), that your chickens are not absorbing enough calcium. You sprinkle it over the feed to encourage absorption.
Author
Hans Krudde
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