Pebble picking

[ezsha]

Following both hatches, I observed Beauty doing extended and energetic pebble picking in Orville's corner.  Is she adding pebbles to her gizzard to help digest the egg shell?

[valhalla]

Following both hatches, I observed Beauty doing extended and energetic pebble picking in Orville's corner.  Is she adding pebbles to her gizzard to help digest the egg shell?

Oh, Man!  My hubby eats those things!

[Dumpsterkitty]

I've seen others do the same thing...while she might eat one or two, she's actually building up the "crib rails".

[ezsha]

Following both hatches, I observed Beauty doing extended and energetic pebble picking in Orville's corner.  Is she adding pebbles to her gizzard to help digest the egg shell?

Oh, Man!  My hubby eats those things!

Here's more about the bird digestive system.

To quote:

The gizzard:

The bird stomach's second chamber is known as the gizzard. If you've ever eaten a chicken gizzard you know how tough and rubbery it is. To accomplish what the gizzard does, it absolutely must be tough, for the gizzard's main function is to grind and digest tough food. Though the gizzard consists of very powerful muscles, it alone can't pulverize everything the typical bird eats; you know how hard uncooked rice and corn kernels are, and these aren't even considered hard types of grain.

Something other than muscle power is needed. This "something else" is acquired when grain- eating birds pick up grit and small rocks as they peck seeds from the ground.

This mineral matter accumulates in the gizzard, and ultimately the gizzard grinds the particles against the seeds, smashing them. Turkey gizzards can actually pulverize English walnuts and steel needles! Bird species that eat softer food possess less well developed gizzards. In some species, the gizzard remains small and insignificant during the summer when the diet consists of soft food such as flesh, insects, or fruit, but it grows more powerful during the winter when seeds are the main food.  Since birds eat such a wide variety of foods, you can imagine that variations on the stomach theme are many. One of the most elegant is found among grebes, which are very common water-birds you're bound to see if you visit local lakes or the seashore. Grebes swallow their own feathers, which accumulate in the region between the gizzard and the intestine following it. This feather-clogged zone then serves as a filter for sharp fish bones that somehow make it past the stomach.



Several hours after an owl eats, the fur, bones, teeth & feathers of its prey still in the gizzard are compressed into a pellet the same shape as the gizzard. In the above photo you can see white bones enmeshed in a mass of fur and feathers. Once formed, the pellet moves up from the gizzard to the proventriculus, where it remains for up to 10 hours before being regurgitated. Owls can't eat while a fully formed pellet is present, blocking the digestive track. When an Owl is ready to produce a pellet it usually closes its eyes, gets a funny luck in its face, doesn't want to fly and, when the pellet is ready to come out, the beak is opened and the pellet simply drops out. Other birds of prey, such as hawks, also produce pellets but the owl's  digestive juices are less acidic than those of other birds of prey, so there is more material present to form a pellet. The pellet above is from a Barn Owl found in a barn near my own home.

[valhalla]

I'll stick with livers, thanks!