Hot weather coop flooring material?

yellowswirl

Chirping
Mar 19, 2015
65
1
54
We live in North Florida, very hot and very humid in the summer. We're leaning towards native dirt in the run and pine shavings in the coop. I've read a lot on here that people use sand in the coop. But, I really like the idea of the deep litter method with pine shavings in the coop so we can use it as compost. But, would this be too hot for them in the summer?

Here's our almost finished coop, we're still making our run. We've decided that we only want to use materials we have. So far so good. Only had to buy the hardware cloth, hinges and the 1x4's for the roof.




these white boards are the coop part where we'll close up the girls at night. it's about 4' x 5'.





during the day they will have access to the underneath part, a large attached run and the yard if we're home.

thanks so much for any insight!
 
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We get very hot here 100 degrees in summer. I love deep litter, keeps cooler my birds scratch down then dirt bath. Plus keeps out the smell from it baking in the sun. I use palm mulch and eucalyptus mulch because it is free. Just take a pitch fork and turn periodically to mix.
 
We started out with pine shaving in the coop, then changed to sand and back to pine shaving. We started having
respiratory problems with our chickens( we lost 3). We don't know if it was the sand or not but decided to go back to the shaving for now.

How many chicks do you have?
 
So sorry to hear you lost 3. How long with the sand before you noticed problems?

We have 9 chickens. They will only be in the coop for sleeping. But it does get hot/humid here. I know some people who use sand, but I don't like the dust part. Plus, they'll have plenty of dirt for dusting in the run and yard.

Totally leaning towards shavings, but I just wanted a few other opinions. I mainly like the shavings because they compost down.
 

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