The scoop on pine shavings

Cacique500 said:

Sand is ok if it's kept dry...wet poopy sand is not fun to deal with and very hard to clean.  

Click to expand...

X2.

Chewbagawk said:

Really? Hmph, for my chicken fun the sand dries all of the droppings out almost instantaneously. Maybe it's drier over here? I've loved it so far, but maybe that's because only half of my run is sand (the other half is dirt).

Click to expand...

For me, three seasons of the year sand worked perfectly for poop cleanup. To keep the poop from being worked into the sand though, I had to clean daily. Then spring hit and snow melt and rain made for a wet, stinky, hard packed mess. Mine was a covered run and the ground was still saturated.

I switched to deep litter and won't ever go back. My girls spend more time confined to the run than I'd like. ( As I type this a hawk is flying overhead. ) Their deep litter provides them with more mental and physical enrichment and nutritional and health benefits that sand ever could. I did a side by side experiment with deep litter vs sand for a month. They spent virtually no time in the sand half of the run.

Sand is very easy to clean--until it's not. If you live in a climate where you get a wet or rainy season you might find that during that season sand doesn't work at all.

TalkALittle said:

For me, three seasons of the year sand worked perfectly for poop cleanup. To keep the poop from being worked into the sand though, I had to clean daily. Then spring hit and snow melt and rain made for a wet, stinky, hard packed mess. Mine was a covered run and the ground was still saturated.

I switched to deep litter and won't ever go back. My girls spend more time confined to the run than I'd like. ( As I type this a hawk is flying overhead. ) Their deep litter provides them with more mental and physical enrichment and nutritional and health benefits that sand ever could. I did a side by side experiment with deep litter vs sand for a month. They spent virtually no time in the sand half of the run.

Sand is very easy to clean--until it's not. If you live in a climate where you get a wet or rainy season you might find that during that season sand doesn't work at all.

Click to expand...

Oh well that explains it! I live in California, and the only time I see a "real winter" is when I watch it on tv, hahaha. Especially with this drought, we don't get a lot of rain (last "winter I think it rained ~10 times) much less snow. Not as dry as Arizona, but I've never seen a quagmire on the groud like you just described. I could definitely see why that would become a problem with sand, plus the deep litter method would provide heat. Different methods for different climates!

What are the dimensions of coop and run And how many chickens will be in it? Do you compost? Can we get a closer picture of the coop and run?
I use deep litter in my run and coop and keep the roof of both sections covered with a large tarp. I find that when the bedding is completely saturated from rainfall the best thing to do is change it all out. Other than that I change it once maybe twice a year. Adding the occasional bag of shavings as they tend to spread it out. I'm sure there's more thats not coming to mind about shavings I'll think of later.
Hope thus us helpful
Attimus

I use pine shavings in my coop and as I clean out poop each day I dump the soiled bedding into the run. We just had some pretty heavy rain because of the tropical storm and it was getting a bit soggy so I put a layer of straw over everything to keep the feet dry. After the rain started letting up I got a couple bags of sand and put that in too. I rake all the straw and shavings into a pile in the middle of the run each weekend and the birds do through it and spread it all out. They've torn the straw up real nice add well. Everything stays turned over and dry this way. It worked for a five day rain ( very heavy and windy) but if your rain is consistent for months with few warm sunny breaks it may not be the best option. The sand I dumped did help with drainage, though, although we do have good soil here (very little clay component). In any case, I love the shavings in the coop as they dry the poop and smell and flies are pretty much nonexistent and it's very low maintenance.

Thanks for your replies. Attimus, to answer your questions, the coop is a small one (two nest boxes, and room for three hens to perch). No, I don't compost (I would like to someday, but would be afraid of not doing it properly). I normally go through and pick things up twice a day. I would like to use a modified deep litter (that is I would like to put something down and to keep adding to it as needed) as long as I can do it properly. I haven't measured our run, but it is basically the area between our house and the fence with a leanto on one side. There will be three chickens in it.

I have been using pine shavings inside the 4'x4' coop and DLM with pine shavings in the 4'x6' covered run for over a year now. It is so easy to maintain that I don't even feel guilty to ask my next door neighbor to help taking care of our chickens when we were away.

Each day, I empty out the poop boards to a compost bin, then hose down the plastic poop boards. There is no absorbent material needed on the poop board if it is cleaned often. In the run, there is not much to be done daily, since we are doing DLM. The pine shavings are very absorbent for moisture and odor, as long as it can stay dry (hence the covered run).

Every 2 to 3 months, I empty out the shavings from inside the coop to the run. Every 6 months (spring and fall), I remove the bottom layer of dust-like poop from inside the run to the compost bin, and keep using the top layer of pine shavings. The chicken manure compost will age inside the bins for 6 months, then gets empty out to the garden.

So far, this maintenance routine has worked very well in our densely populated suburban setting. My neighbors never complain about odor and we have no flies.

We have another non-covered fenced-in area about 7 'x 30' next to the coop behind the shed where we dump all the grass clippings and shredded leaves. The chickens love it there too to scratch around for bugs, no need to clean after them either.

You can use pine shaving inside the coop and yard wastes as bedding for DLM inside the run, just make sure that there is no pesticide or fertilizer in the grass clippings. Some raking is needed if the grass and leaves stay wet and clump together.

So far, I really love the pine shaving and DLM setup. Scooping out poop everyday in a sandy run is not for me.

Sound like those will be some happy chickens. A bale of shavings would last you a while with only 3 chickens even if you had to change out the run now and again if it got wet.
Attimus