Anyone use SAND in the run/coop - Page 5

naturegrrl: what kind of chickens do you have? one looks like a RIR and the brown/black birds are very pretty!

I switched to sand this summer in my coop.  I love, love, love it.  It is so much easier to clean the coop now.  No more back braking scaping out the old hay.  I found a "shrub rake" at Wal-Mart and it makes for a quick and easy clean up.  The poop dries a lot quicker and I hardly notice any odor at all.

I have poop catchers but love the sand.  The chickens like to dust bathe in it too.   It is not as messy as chips were or as wet.  My chips kept getting wet from the underlying soil the sand stays nice and dry.  Also not as much of a fire hazard come winter if I use any lights for heat.  Or if I use a heated water dish.  I would LOVE to be able to get enough sand for my run.  It is 12 x 48 ft.  So no time soon.  The bags are too heavy for me to lift or drag.  Dr. orders.  yuck.    I hate limitations.  Use sand if you can.  Gloria Jean

I have sand in my run and pine pellets in my coop.  Very absorbent and trouble free.
The sand is cool in the shade during the summer months which the girls really like. It dries the poop out and keeps any smell to a minimum.

We are fighting a flooding problem right now with all of our rain. The run is like a swamp! My poor chickies just stand around in it all day. Dumb???? Anyways we were thinking of putting some trenches in to help drainage but will putting sand in do the same thing? Our run is 8ft x 32 ft x 16 ft x 24 ft. Pretty big to be buying bags. So if we done this we would have to order a truck load so I wanna make sure before I spend the money!! Any advice would be awesome. Thanks!!

I would try the coarse sand that is used to make cement.  The chooks should eat a little for grit so that would be one less thing to buy...I am going to try it with mine at the gate area where it is muddy in wet weather anyway.  Only difference I can see is that they would be eating limestone as opposed to  granite.  Difference is $1 per lb for granite grit as opposed to $15/ton for limestone coarse sand.;)javascript:insert_text('',%20'');

I'm SO happy to see so many of you using sand in your coops!  It really is fantastic and was nearly unheard of last year!

Good for all of you!  I love my sand coops too, although I've never used anything else except in the brooder.

Nifty Linked my BYC Sand Page from the Learning Center...  if you all can think of anything I should add to it, please let me know!
http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=11374-sand-for-your-coops

ok so last night me and my dear steven had a conversation trying to figure out what we want to do about drainage. i really would like to try sand but he believes digging a huge trench and making a french drain is the only way to go. if sand would suffice it would be waaay cheaper. should i side with him on this or is trying sand first worth the shot?
thanks again!

you need to fix the drainage issue first, put in your drains..  a puddle of poopy sand is not a good thing either.

The red girl is actually a buckeye - very similar in color to a RIR, but she has a pea comb instead of a single comb, and apparently Buckeyes are built a bit differently than RIR - stockier, or something.    The other gals are buff Brahmas.  They are all absolute dolls!