Best Broiler Litter for Footpad Health: Wood Shavings vs Pelleted vs Straw

If you raise broilers for a living, you already know the floor under those birds matters more than most people give it credit for. Get the bedding wrong and you don’t just end up with a messy house. You end up with sore-footed chickens, slower weight gain, and a pile of welfare problems that work their way straight into your bottom line.

So what is the best litter for broilers? A full 42-day production trial points to a clear answer: wood shavings and well-managed pelleted bedding protect footpad health best, while loose straw-based litter carries the highest risk of early foot sores. The material you pick matters, but its physical form, loose versus pelleted, turns out to matter just as much.

Here is what the research found, and what it means for your barn.

Why litter is more than just bedding

Broilers spend their entire short lives standing, sitting, scratching, and resting on litter. Good litter does a surprising amount of quiet work. It soaks up spilled water and droppings, keeps birds off the cold concrete, and cushions their contact with the floor. The one job that really counts, though, is staying dry enough that it never becomes a breeding ground for skin disease.

Poor litter does the opposite. Once it stays wet it cakes and clumps and stops doing its job, and that is when footpad dermatitis shows up. Some people call it pododermatitis. The birds develop raw, sore spots on their feet, hocks, and in bad cases their breast. Sore birds move less and eat less, so they grow slower. Welfare drops, and so does performance.

The floor is one of the biggest levers you have for keeping a flock healthy. It is not a detail you can ignore.

What the trial actually tested

Researchers ran a controlled comparison with three natural, widely available materials: wheat straw, wood shavings, and peat. They used each in two physical forms:

• loose chopped wheat straw
• loose wood shavings
• a loose mix of wheat straw, wood shavings, and peat in equal parts
• pelleted wheat straw
• pelleted softwood
• a pelleted mix of wheat straw, wood shavings, and peat in equal parts

They housed 576 broilers across the six groups, with identical pens, feeders, drinkers, and ventilation. Each pen got 6 kg of litter per square metre and was then left alone. No top-ups, no stirring, no added maintenance. The team wanted to see how each material held up on its own through a complete grow-out.

Every week they scored the litter, measured how wet it was and what its pH was, and examined every bird’s footpads for lesions.

The headline findings

Wood shavings and pelleted litter kept feet healthiest. Birds on loose wood shavings and on pelleted bedding developed the mildest footpad damage overall. By the end of the cycle, the lowest lesion scores landed in the wood shavings group and in two of the three pelleted groups.

Loose straw-based litter was the risky choice. Birds on loose chopped wheat straw, and especially on the loose straw, wood, and peat mix, showed the first lesions as early as day 7. That is a full two weeks earlier than birds on pelleted litter, who stayed lesion-free until around day 21. Wood shavings held out even longer, to roughly day 28.

Moisture mattered more than pH. All the litters started with different pH values. The wood-based and peat materials were acidic, the straw-based ones alkaline. By the end of the cycle every group had drifted into a similar slightly alkaline range. pH never tracked with foot health. Moisture did. The groups that stayed drier had healthier feet.

The material’s physical structure was the real secret. This is the part worth sitting with. The loose wood shavings group actually ran higher in moisture toward the end of the trial than some other groups, yet the birds on it still had excellent footpads. Why? The shavings let water drain away and air move through, so the birds were never standing in a saturated contact layer. Coarse, loose straw trapped moisture right at the surface and rubbed at the footpads mechanically, which sped up lesion development.

Pellets are not magic, they break down. Pelleted litter started strong. It was dense, low in dust, and protective. But the pellets began disintegrating from around day 28, and by the end of the trial their early advantage had partly faded. Pelleting helps, but only for as long as the pellets hold together.

What makes a good litter in the first place

Before you pick a material, it helps to know what you are actually shopping for. A decent broiler litter should absorb moisture quickly but still dry out, resist ammonia buildup, stay low in dust and free of contaminants, and be non-toxic, cheap, and easy to source locally. It should also give the birds a soft, insulating layer between them and the floor, and break down into something useful afterward. Plenty of farmers spread spent litter back on the fields as soil amendment.

Wood shavings tick most of those boxes. They are easy to handle, you can reuse them, and they are genuinely absorbent. Peat gets used because it takes up and releases excess moisture fast. Straw is the cheapest and most abundant option in a lot of regions, which is exactly why it gets used so widely despite its drawbacks.

What this means for your barn

If you take one thing away, make it this: the form of your litter is at least as important as the raw material. A few practical takeaways.

Wood shavings are a safe, forgiving default. They cushion the footpad and drain well, which makes them hard to beat for foot health.

Pelleted litter can work, if you manage it. The pellet form protects early, but plan around the eventual breakdown. Pelleted systems pay off when disintegration is delayed or actively managed.

Loose straw needs more hands-on care. It is cheap and available, but it demands more attention to keep wet surface patches from forming. Extra stirring, better drainage near the drinkers, and tighter ventilation all help.

Chase dryness, not a pH number. Keeping litter physically dry at the surface beats obsessing over pH. Good ventilation and disciplined water management do more for foot health than any additive.

Watch the surface, not just the averages. Standard litter scoring can miss the localised wet pockets where lesions actually begin. Walk the house and feel for damp spots, especially along the drinker lines.

The bottom line

Across a full production cycle, the litter that kept its structure and stayed dry at the surface protected broiler feet the best. Wood shavings and well-managed pelleted bedding consistently outperformed loose straw-based options for footpad health. For producers, that boils down to a simple rule of thumb. Choose a litter that holds its shape and stays dry underfoot, then run the house so it stays that way.

Your birds’ feet will thank you, and so will your production numbers.