Results from First Year with Deep Litter Method

Beekissed said:

Rose, your run is wet anyway when it rains? Usually this presents itself with a slimy, stinky and humid run with puddles in some areas, high spots in others and it stays wet unless there are several dry days and a good breeze...does that sound right? Harmful bacteria and mold LOVE this kind of soil and, though you cannot see it, they are thriving there and being picked at and eaten by your birds as they go about their chickeny lives. Cocci love that kind of a run!

Now, imagine that same space with a ground cover of debris much like the forest floor. The soils under the leaf, bark, twig, pine needles and such will start to become more loose and aerated as bugs and worms start moving in under this cover. The soil is less impacted by foot traffic because the litter is a cushion. Excess moisture is wicked away from the top layer and absorbed into the bottom layers as the soils become looser and more able to absorb excess moisture, so your birds are not walking directly on moist, slimy, fecal covered soils. The feces is washed into the bedding with each rain and digested by the composting due to the binding of the nitrogenous feces with the carbonaceous litter and the bugs living and thriving there do the rest~feeding on the manure and the healthy bacteria/yeasts in the litter.

A whole thriving ecosystem starts to grow where only packed down, barren soil was before and water no longer stands in stagnant pools breeding who knows what in the humidity of your climate. The only molds growing are those that are beneficial to the composting of the litter and will not harm the birds. The birds will have something to do, searching in the litter for the bugs and worms to be found there(that is, as long as you don't shower it with DE) and can derive more protein for their diet. The smells are digested by the litter and flies no longer find the run as attractive because it just smells like...dirt.

Rose, I wouldn't use grass clippings in your climate because of the humidity, but I would certainly use the litter you describe in your cow path. With a run that big, you might also contact the local tree removal companies and offer them a place to dump their ground up tree debris. Asplundht(sp) is one such company who will gladly bring you large loads of chipped up trees because they have to pay in order to dump that in the landfills. I know folks who let them dump it on their farm so they can use it for garden mulching, bedding in animal pens and coops, etc.


Guppy, I would never dump actual food scraps on top of my litter for the birds to 'scratch into the bedding" for a few simple reasons. Some food scraps won't get eaten and will sit there and rot, attract gnats and flies and won't do a bit of good..they will sit and mold/decay. The second is for the reason you mentioned...I don't put their food where they poop. They are bound to consume some manner of fecal material in their lifespan but actually placing large pieces of food on the manure isn't something I would do. This is one reason I don't recommend folks scattering their feed in the run for them to "have fun scratching and pecking"...that's okay on occasion and if they are using a deep litter that digests manure, but on a barren run littered with high levels of fecal matter, it's just not sanitary to be eating past poop every day and compounding intestinal pathogen and parasite loads.

In the winter I have scattered BOSS in areas where feces is most likely to be deposited on days when they are confined to the coop for deep snows but these are slick and tiny seeds that do not adhere to feces like, say, a broccoli spear would. The BOSS is small enough to filter down past any fecal matter and must be searched for, thus would indeed cause the feces to be moved and worked into the bedding without it actually having much contact with the seeds.

But...that's a rarity and only when I have BOSS on hand and the birds have been confined for several days. Usually I don't have much concentrated feces in the coop as my birds free range all the time.

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Ufitlinda said:

Thank you for sharing your knowledge

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