Manna Pro Poultry Grit Review: Check the Bag, Not the Title

What's in the bag

Crushed granite in a five-pound bag, with probiotics added. For grit that's close to a sufficient specification: the job is mechanical, and granite is the standard material because it's hard and doesn't dissolve, so it stays in the gizzard and grinds instead of washing away.

What the listing never states, in its title, bullets or specifications, is the particle size. On a product that's nothing but particle size, that's a real omission, and it's most of why Build Quality sits at 7.0 rather than higher. Country Heritage, which costs a good deal more per pound, states the grind in both of its listings, one described as full sized for mature chickens and bantams and the other as chick sized from two weeks old. Manna Pro leaves you working it out from which bag you happened to buy.

The probiotics are the other thing we can't assess. Grit is swallowed to sit in the gizzard and grind, so whatever a probiotic does in that setting isn't something the listing explains or quantifies, and we aren't going to assign it a benefit we can't describe.

Grit isn't oyster shell, and the shelf doesn't help

This is the mistake worth preventing, because the two look similar in a bag and do unrelated jobs. Granite grit doesn't dissolve. It sits in the gizzard and grinds. Oyster shell is calcium, eaten by laying hens and absorbed, and in our read it does little lasting grinding precisely because it breaks down. A bird offered only oyster shell has nothing durable to grind with; a bird offered only granite gets no extra calcium.

Product titles actively blur this. We found an oyster shell listing selling itself as "Crushed Oyster Shell for Chickens - Poultry Grit Calcium", which manages to name both products while being only one of them. One keeper in the threads below warns about exactly that, that a bag sold as grit may be a calcium product, and the warning is a fair one.

So read the material rather than the word on the front. If what you want is shell quality, you want oyster shell. If what you want is grinding, you want granite, and this bag is granite.

Shell quality has its own causes beyond calcium, which our guide to hens that stop laying works through, and where both of these fit in the wider diet is in our feeding guide.

Does your flock even need it?

Honest answer: maybe not. A bird eating nothing but complete pellets or crumble has little to grind, and the feed is formulated to be digestible as it is. A bird eating scratch, whole grains, kitchen scraps or anything it finds outside does need grinding material, and that covers most backyard flocks.

The other half is what is already underfoot. Birds with access to soil, sand or gravel pick up their own grit and have done so for as long as there have been birds, which is why plenty of keepers never buy a bag and never have a problem. Our read is that a bag of grit is cheap insurance for a run with a bare or deep-litter floor, and close to redundant for a flock ranging over gravel and dirt.

If you're working out what the flock should be eating in the first place, start with the feeding guide, and the treats list covers the scraps side, which is exactly the food that needs grinding.

How to put it out

Free choice, in a small separate dish, is the normal way and the one we would follow. Most birds take what they need and leave the rest, so a dish they can get at is enough, and you refill it rarely. The alternative is scattering it in a feeding area, which the Country Heritage listing suggests and which suits a flock that eats outside.

Mixing it into the feed is the contested one. It works, and keepers do it, particularly where a bird struggles to pick grit out of a dish. The argument against is that it is wasted into the litter along with everything else a flock scratches out of a feeder, which is a feeder problem as much as a grit one.

Feed on the floor is the expensive version of this problem, and our feeder guide covers the designs that stop it.

Value

This is the strongest axis by a distance. Five pounds of grit for a small flock isn't a monthly purchase, it's a seasonal one, and the per-bird cost disappears next to feed, bedding or any piece of hardware. Even if your birds turn out not to need it, the downside of having a bag is a bag.

The one way to waste money here's to buy the wrong product twice, which the labeling makes easier than it should be. Buy the grind that matches the birds you have, and if your layers aren't already on a layer ration, offer oyster shell free choice as a separate thing.

Who it's for

• Flocks eating scratch, whole grains, treats or forage, which is to say most backyard flocks.
• Runs with a bare, deep-litter or paved floor, where there is nothing for a bird to pick up on its own.
• Keepers who want one cheap thing off the list for a season at a time.
• Anyone who has been offering oyster shell and assuming it covers digestion, because it doesn't.

Who should skip it

• Brooders. The bag is labeled for mature birds whatever the Amazon title says, and chicks need the finer grind sold separately.
• Flocks ranging all day over soil, sand or gravel, which are already picking up their own.
• Birds eating complete pellets and nothing else, where there is little to grind in the first place.
• Anyone chasing better eggshells, which is usually a calcium question and a different bag.

The verdict

The product is right and cheap, and the listing is the weak part. Buy it for a flock of mature birds eating anything beyond plain pellets, put it out free choice in its own dish, and treat calcium as a separate decision rather than something this bag covers. If you're buying for chicks, ignore the title and get the chick grind, because the bag in that photograph is telling you the truth and the headline isn't.