Today, we began adding some grit on

Today, we began adding some grit on top of the baby chicks’ food. The grit is made from small pieces of crushed granite. The chicks will eat some of the grit and store it in their gizzard, where they will use it to grind the food that they eat. They don’t need very much, so we just sprinkled some on like you would do when salting your own food.

We didn’t have any “chick grit” on hand, but we did have a previously opened 50 pound bag of adult sized grit, also known as grower grit (a 50 pound bag of grit lasts a long time). This “grower” grit is too big for baby chicks, so we made chick grit by crushing or grinding the grower grit.


Grinding Grit

At first, we crushed it with a hammer, which worked pretty well but was slow, then with a little experimentation, we found that we could grind chick grit much more quickly and with better results by rubbing it between two large stones that each have a flat surface.