Deep litter method

[Beekissed]

I can do this in the run? Our girls area is dirt and right now it's basically mud with all the rain we're getting. If I pile a layer of leaves, wood chips, pine needles (which we have plenty of all 3 of those in our yard) it'll help with the wet mucky smell out there?

You sure can! It's where it makes the most sense. Pile it deep and keep something along the base of your run to contain it so the birds can't kick it back out again. It will not only help with the smell and mud, but will help discourage flies in the summer. Since using a composting deep litter system, I haven't seen a fly....and that's been 4 yrs now. And you don't have to clean it out at all, just keep adding to it.

Eventually it may develop such a thick layer of compost or soil that you may want to remove some for garden use each year but you'll never have to remove old bedding material...it will get digested into the mass and turn to compost/soil.

Building it deep will insure the excess moisture wicks into the bottom layers and the top will stay mildly damp during wet weather but you'll no longer have puddles and mud. Any time you see such as that, you don't have your deep litter deep enough, so you'll need to add more.

I'd store up all the leaves you can right now so you'll have enough litter materials to take you through spring and summer of next year. Folks are bagging them for you in every little town and just throwing them away. The pickings are ripe right now!

 

[iawoodchip]

I am in no way an expert on chickens, but it sounds to me like your run is in a low spot and holds the water . In my case the run is on a slight slope and the litter dries out quickly. I've been blessed with no fowl odor. (no pun intended)

 

[Beekissed]

Still in the middle of leaf collection season here, with many more trees in town still due to shed their leaves, mostly oak trees but still a few large maples shedding. We've had really mild November weather here, so that keeps the leaves on longer than normal. I have some stored but not nearly enough to get me through winter, spring and summer months, so I'm still collecting. Have 19 large bags of maple leaves on the truck right now that are needing unloading.

I jacked up the front end of my hoop coop~it is on a slight slope and had never been really level~to get some more height/depth there for accumulating deep litter. It's lovely to have all that space to build deeper litter and not bump my head on the center beam.

Under the roosts I still have a deep mound cooking where I dumped all my garden debris...I think it was 15 cartloads that went into the two coops....even since it started good composting, I still have DL about 2-3 ft. thick under my roosts!!! Sure makes it easier for the fat girls and boy to mount up to the roosts but it also makes them climb a hill when they use the back pop door into the coop.








It wasn't composting down as quickly as I liked until I decided that it needed more moisture retention in order to be able to compost downward, so I covered that mass with leaves and straw and just continue to keep it all capped off with the same and now I'm seeing some downward movement of that huge, tangled mass of vines and grasses.






It's been a month now since adding more leaves to that green stuff and I'm seeing some good composting going on there....just needed to remember the first principle of good composting deep litter in a coop....cap off the moisture!!!! Don't let it dry out under there and stuff will still keep rotting down.

 

[microchick]

Beekissed, I am really impressed by your DL set up. Your flock looks like they are really doing their job, digging around all that compost for you.

I've been busily gathering leaves and stuffing them into bags for use over the winter months. We had high winds here over the last two weeks that have obligingly deposited a couple more bags worth of leaves on our back porch for me to gather up.

The chickens didn't exactly warm up quickly to the idea of the leaves in their coop. Every time I dumped a bag they went into a blind chicken panic at the noise they made and spent a half hour running around screaming at the top of their little lungs. In no time they were busily digging around in them quite content until time to dump the next bag. You would think they would learn.

The only downfall I have found with the leaves it that I'm digging them out of their feeder and at times water container.

 

[Beekissed]

Yeah...that is a problem, but I've managed to get around it. I put their heated watering bowl up in a nesting unit so they can just hop up there and get a drink, far above the DL below, and I just dump the feed right on top of the leaves in the feeder....soon enough the chickens clear out the leaves to get at the feed. Saves me the work.

Hey...let all the other folks in the local town do all your leaf work for you! I don't have to rake up all the leaves here because I can just nab hundreds and hundreds of bagged leaves in town if I want. They don't want them and I do, so it's a win/win. Last year I collected over 200 bags of leaves for the garden, orchard and coop...that was done in just 4-5 days of hauling leaves. This year I won't be collecting that many but we can still manage to salt away many bags of leaves for free and for just the effort of lifting bags into the truck and strapping them down for the trip home.

 

[microchick]

I wish!

I think most of the people in our nearest small town burn all their leaves in barrels. Quite legal in Missouri. I don't think I'fe seen a yard barge bag or a trash bag full of leaves at the curb all fall.

As we have 20+ acres of timber, oak, hickory and walnut, all I have to do is motivate my posterior outside with the rake and get to work. We are looking at rain and snow this weekend here after having a really mild fall so I need to get out and rake leaves for the run this after noon.

Yesterday I bought a bale of straw for the nesting boxes and was dismayed to open it and discover that the middle of it was wet. I considered just dumping it but then had a better idea. I drug a tarp into our shop, took the wet straw in and fluffed it out on the tarp. I turned a fan on it last night and this morning, ta da! Dry straw.

Owning chickens makes you inventive.

 

[Korzak]

Beekissed, I am so glad you added pictures. That makes me feel much better about adding a ton of leaves to our run. I didn't want to bury the girls in them

 

[Beekissed]

The great thing about leaves is that they break up rather quickly into small pieces, so you can drown your chickens with them one day and those same leaves will be 4 in. deep the next time you look around. Later on they turn to even smaller particles that look rather like dust...and all of that is mixed with chicken manure that has broken down as well...the combination has no odor of feces at all, but smells like soil. Pure garden gold!!!

 

[Beekissed]

I feel good about having all my leaf needs stored for now. Very thankful to have such a resource that is free for the taking and will help my chickens in my garden. The DL is great for now but I have a feeling I'll have to add moisture this year, as my coop is no longer leaky in the places it needs to be.

 

[microchick]

I was able to get a couple of bags raked up and down in the run before our first snow occurred yesterday. I have no desire to slip slide my way around chasing after birds that don't have better sense than to run around outside at sunset. My big discovery was that I need to rake up about ten more bags just to handle the run. I have two bags on hand for the coop and could use more for there also.

DH had used his tractor blade to scrap up a pile of leaves for me and left them near one of our trails back in our timber. Hopefully I'll be able to get back and get them once it dries out again and the temps come out. They are calling for highs in the 20s here this week. Guess winter is really here this time.