Deep litter method

[MagicChicken]

I would think in the summer, if you drive into many subdivisions on trash day you'll find bags of grass clippings by the curb. In the fall, drive through and you'll find bags of leaves. You could also contact any tree service near you and ask if you can have their chipper stuff. Most of them pay to dump it and would be glad for someone to take it away for free. Contact lawn care companies (mowing services) and ask if you could have some of their clippings. Contact your city arborist or public works dept and ask them what they do with the grass clippings and chipper material from their public landscape maintenance. I mean there are options...

In areas with water that falls out of the sky and green vegetation around, these ideas would be great. In my desert area it's xeriscaping all the way. Hardly anyone has grass because no one can afford the water bills. And the city is too far away to deal with. I'll stick with my current management program, which is pine shavings bedding + whatever garden stuff I can scrounge, that I change out and compost 2-3 times a year. It's not ideal but it works.

 

[microchick]

Magic chicken, I agree with you, 100%. DH and I were married in Casa Grande and have friends there. There just ain't no such thing as yard clippings there where you are.

I do have a suggestion for you though. Straw. Bales of both straw and hay should be available for you to purchase. I know there are lots of horses around. Even bales of alfalfa or brome hay would work as bedding for your chickens and while the alfalfa might be more expensive your chickens would absolutely love it and it would give you an alternative to lawn clippings.

 

[paintedChix]

I'm in a desert area too. Most of our trees have thorns. Last year I had my trees pruned and the tree-trimmers left me a large pile of wood chips. Except they weren't really chips. They were more like chunks and small branch pieces. And those chunks had thorns. Big thorns. I put one wheelbarrow of the stuff into one of my coops and instantly regretted it. I was stepping on thorns every time I went in there. The chickens were too. I eventually raked most of those wood chunks out because the thorns were so annoying.

Most of my trees have tiny leaflets. Too small to rake up. Garden debris is seasonal and not much volume. I am jealous of all the folks who have ready supplies of leaves and grass.

Also, check with horse farms in your area. While you don't want a lot of horse manure (I actually put some in our chicken hoop coops), you can use dry bedding (shavings & straw) and any hay they remove from the horses' stalls/pens. But again, a lot of hay is now treated w/ herbicide (something that we are dealing with all the time now in NC).

You can always ask...

Besides yard crews - check with a Master Gardener or local chapters of FFA/4H from the schools. Any gardening greens they aren't using would be appropriate. Every little bit helps.

 

[Kusanar]

Quote:
An add on to the master gardener idea, at least in my area, the master gardeners are mostly older, some of them may not be up to taking care of a compost pile, they would probably be more than glad to supply you with compostables in exchange for some of the bedding once it has composted.

 

[Beekissed]

That's exactly right! My "leaf" people are elderly and have a few small raised bed garden spaces they tend....they mulch and bag 90 bags of pin oak leaves per year, so I give them eggs and have already given them a bag of well composted chicken litter and a bag of composted cow manure this year in exchange for being their exclusive leaf collector this next fall.

 

[microchick]

Over the winter months I added steadily to the pine chips in our coop and brome hay was laid in the run to try to control the mud and keep the chickens feet off the cold ground. In March I did spring cleaning, emptying out the chips in the coop, raking up the 8 inches of hay from their run and adding it to our compost pile which was mainly from our barn (previous owner took his horses but left a foot of manure for us to deal with) and had been composting for the last 8 years. I recently took a pitchfork and turned over some of the compost where it was thinnest and I was amazed. The soil was rich black and the earth worms fell out of it.

Our plan is to continue to compost our chicken bedding. This fall I'll do a cleaning and repeat the process but I have a question for whoever can come up with the answer for me. How are you spreading your composted manure? We have a large pasture that would really benefit from having fertilizer broadcast on it. We don't run livestock or horses on it, DH keeps it neatly mowed so we can fly RC airplanes and quads. Outside of going out and buying a manure spreader to do the job, is there another option?

 

[Beekissed]

I side dress my garden and flower beds with it but when I want to place it under the fruit trees I just dump it out and let the chickens spread it the rest of the way. They do it much more thoroughly than I can and it saves me the work.

 

[microchick]

I wish I could do it that way but unfortunately we have at least 3 families of hawks nesting in the timber that surrounds our house. We can only let the girls out occasionally and under strict observation. This spring we found several areas of evidence that hawks had preyed on migrating birds that were flying over our property and over nighting in our pond. It's just plain creepy to find a round circle of feathers and nothing else.

 

[aCoolChick]

I rather think the idea is to not HAVE a "floor." Let the frame of the coop rest on a solid perimeter foundation, leaving the soil. The soil is the magic. The soil is alive with millions upon millions of microbes that actually DO the composting! When you do your annual cleaning, leave some of the old compost there to kick-start the new layers you lay down. Do NOT use Clorox! It will kill the microbes that do all the work. They didn't have Clorox in the middle ages and the chickens did just fine! Better than most of the people! Clorox probably isn't too good for the chickens, either. Just a little natural soap and water is enough to clean out the nest boxes, with clean litter added when dried. Best resource I've ever read on deep litter is "The Small-Scale Poultry Flock" by Harvey Ussery. Guy's been raising chickens for decades.

 

[hiagain]

I absolutely don't know what I am doing...got 'chickens' on Wednesday and discovering as I go that I need a nesting spot and so on. The farmer I got the hens from said that deep litter was best....but I don't know if they will lay there?? I have a high up place for them to lay with just a little dusting of sawdust on it. Should I have that as deep litter??