if you have not already put up a order of wood shaving for bedding, might want to get that order in sooner then later.. there is up and coming wood shaving shortage coming across Canada this winter..
The slowed production or even closure at lumber mills across Canada, especially in BC and Quebec, is responsible, and those in the bedding industry are warning that it is going to get worse.
the cost locally of shaving has been going up the past few years as well.. but at least they are in stock..
Bidding wars for raw materials among shavings and pellet suppliers are not uncommon, also driving prices up. “We’ve already seen prices climb pretty much since May of this year,” says Harbom, adding that farm managers can expect delays of up to eight weeks to receive a shipment of shavings these days. Currently, prices in Ontario are in the $5/bag range, but a check on hayexchange.com shows a wildly fluctuating array of prices across Canada and the US from about $3.50 to $8 a bag.
my current supplier has them for 5.75 per bag at pickup which give me a 10 percent discount..
depending on where you live, straw prices are also up because of a poor harvest due to weather. This in turns drives up the shavings demand and costs. A report in the Goderich Signal-Star indicated that while in most years the price per pound has been in the 3.5-4 cent range, this year wheat straw has been selling from six to 10 cents a pound, with some pre-harvest prices going as high as 20 cents a pound at auction, making straw worth more than the grain itself.
I prefer straw for certain things but trying to find that this year is hard.. straw is VERY hard to come by due to the weather and what crop got grown locally this year and the straw I can get is higher priced per pound delivered then hay at the moment..
How are things in your neck of the woods? What are prices and supply like?
Just another Day on the Farm 
I’m shocked that Canada has a wood shaving shortage considering how much lumber there is up there. But I guess if people don’t have enough straw, demand outstrips the supply.
We average about $5 US. I should buy in bulk but my little hay barn is usually full. I only use shavings for the chickens. I had a bad experience with straw. The one and only time I used it, my chickens came down with mites. I can only assume they came in on the straw. It’s never happened again since.
agree so much better for the fowl with the shavings, we have seen a massive slow down in our lumber mills due to out of country sales of our lumber slowing and so it means they are either lowering shifts at the lumber plants or even doing temp closing and lay off.. no lumber sales means no shavings which brings about a storage.. the straw shortage is weather related, the shaving shortage is export related.. sigh!
We need to get some straw for our chicken coop. My husband went to the feed store and he said they were out one day and then when he checked again the prices were very expensive. I will check again this week since that was a few months back. We use a lot of yard clippings and grass for the chickens or we let them loose now and then in our garden area. We have raccoons in our neighborhood and they have even been sightings of a fox and it’s family.
Hi RedHouse
I hear you on the fox, I saw one trot down my main frontage road like it owned the place and man was it a big one.. it didn’t even look at my farm but it does not fool me at all.. If it had the chance it would come in and go for it if it could.. the farmers grew mostly soybean around us this year so not to many coons.. if it has been a corn year, we have more.. Thankfully very few ever stick around and become a issue, most are just passing though.
Good luck on finding a your winter coop bedding and hopefully at a reasonable price as well.