Best Flooring/ Bedding

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Sand is hands down my favorite bedding!!! It keeps their feet clean, helps keep their nails trimmed, they can dust bathe even in the winter, it does NOT hold moisture like shavings, straw, and hay can. It will not mold. It makes clean up SO easy! Its like cleaning a litterbox without the ammonia smell lol When I switched, my girls were ecstatic! I will never go back to anything else in our coops!! (I only use all purpose sand or construction sand - which can also be used as paving sand and paving base) Locally here, you can get an entire truck bed of sand for $15 at the quarry or a bulk warehouse. Never have I seen it over $20. Just check your local proces. And since you only need to do a completely change twice a YEAR, it saves you tons of money in the end :)
 
Silica is not only bad for your chickens to breath in but it is bad for you too! We use play sand that has no silica and is dried.
 
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Well. I'm convinced. I will definitely be using sand. I'll be building my coop on our back porch/deck, so I'm going to try and find some linoleum scraps from a flooring store, so the sand wont seep through the cracks in the flooring. Thank you for this post!!
 
My local feed store seems really high on coconut cowboy. It's basicslly shavings of coconut husks. It has worked great for the brooder so far. Very absorbent and no smell. Was planning to use it in the coop and try DLM. Does anyone have experience with coconut shavings? At the moment the run is bare earth so I think I will need a solution for that too so it doesn't get muddy. Although I live in SoCal where it never rains.
 
JayRodNU said:
My local feed store seems really high on coconut cowboy. It's basicslly shavings of coconut husks. It has worked great for the brooder so far. Very absorbent and no smell. Was planning to use it in the coop and try DLM. Does anyone have experience with coconut shavings? At the moment the run is bare earth so I think I will need a solution for that too so it doesn't get muddy. Although I live in SoCal where it never rains.
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I have used coconut coir for flower beds. And I think it is good in compost. I don't know of a reason not to use it for chickens.
 
That is my question too. We just built a 12X12 raised coop. I am not sure that I want the weight of sand. What are other options? Getting chickens on Saturday (5-6 month old hens).
 
Lynyrd66 said:
Too heavy for a chicken tractor though?
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Put sand in our chicken tractor last fall and LOVE iit. I only put shavings in the nesting boxes now. It keeps things so much dryer and cleaner. Also keeps the smell down, helps keep their nails shorter, and they can dust bathe in it. I cant think of any negatives.
 

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