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Creating wood charcoal and ash from native wood can be a very beneficial and an important supplement for your poultry. Charcoal can absorb toxins and is capable of absorbing up to two hundred times its own weight. It is still used today in hospital emergency rooms as a universal antidote to treat drug overdoses and unidentified poisonings. Animals in the wild would come across charcoal after forest fires or lightening strikes and they would be drawn to these places to consume charcoal. Charcoal has minimal nutritional value, but research suggests that animals consume it for its medicinal, toxin-binding properties. The charcoal is also laxative and so then can work twofold and move the impurities it absorbs out of the body. If worms or worm ova are present, it can to some degree help move them out of the body as well. Your poultry will also eat wood ash as well as charcoal. Wood ash has a very nice texture to aid in dustbathing and adding it their dust bathing pits to eat and dust in will give your poultry a double-benefit! Wood ash is highly soluble in Vitamin K, followed by calcium and magnesium. Vitamin K is useful for blood clotting in poultry. Charcoal can be made from dry and clean branches or tree stumps and burning slowly in a deep pit. Or throw an un-split log on a bonfire or fireplace as the fire is winding down in heat and intensity. Slow burning is essential to charcoal making, and you can damp down a fire that is burning too quickly with some water. I would build an outdoor bonfire and leave the remains of a fire pit where they range and let them eat it free choice. You can also mix ash with their feed mash/seed occasionally and this might be a good thing to do once or twice during the winter time, especially if you have a handy fireplace. Or give them a charred piece of wood in their coops to peck at. 11/16/2009Charcoal pieces I have tacked up in my coops and in my pen. I will compare mid-winter, and end of winter the consumption that was done. 
01/01/2010 Woodash is good for consumption and dustbathing. I rake out a spot in my pen and dump the ash. The earth remains soft from the heavy straw mulch in the pen. It allows them to dust-bath all winter.. 
References: Principles and Practice of Poultry Culture by John H. Robinson, 1912 Application of lime and wood ash to decrease acidification of forest soils K. J. Meiwes1(1) Forest Experiment Station of Lower Saxony, Grätzelstr. 2, D 37079 Göttingen, Germany, 2004 The Chicken Health Handbook by Gail Damerow, 1994 |
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