Results from First Year with Deep Litter Method

[GuppyTJ]

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....

Thanks, Beekissed, this confirms/clarifies things for me. And for the tip on BOSS (black olil sunflower seeds). Inside my coop, I have dried grass clippings/straw on top of some type of soil covered with a thick layer of what I think is lime, which the prior owners put down many years ago. One time, the coop flooded out so to help the ground dry, I pulled off all the straw and daily, spayed up 4-6 inches of dirt to air it out and help it dry faster. There are NO worms or bugs in the soil so whatever is covering the floor does not support composting organisms. I'm thinking about converting to deep litter and to do so, I'd have to layer some compostable materials on top of the existing lime-type dirt and assume that the lime dirt will act more as a composting barrier vs. what normal dirt/soil would be.

Just thinking this through.
Guppy

 

[eggspectation]

Here are our eggs from ee, and poduction reds.

 

[Fowl Wench]

This is SO good to know! I just bought DE after reading about its virtues. Darnit! So I've already sprinkled it in the coop. I have straw down in the chicken house and it smells very
strongly of ammonia. But it did before I used the DE anyway. It's weird ... 4 years ago, I had chickens in the same run and never had a smelly coop. I just don't understand what could
possibly be different. I'm going to continue with the DLM and start putting the scraps under their roosts and hopefully that will help. But now I have this nice new can of DE. I guess
I will save it for next spring or summer to use directly on the birds if they get any bugs. Although, in my past coop, I also never had bug issues, so hopefully that good fortune will
repeat itself.

Thanks for keeping us posted on your experience!

 

[Beekissed]

You might also switch up from using straw as it's not very absorbent nor does it compost well, so maybe a mix of leaves, pine needles, wood shavings, etc. ? Straw just lies there and stinks but it doesn't actually do much else.

 

[RoseMarie1]

You might also switch up from using straw as it's not very absorbent nor does it compost well, so maybe a mix of leaves, pine needles, wood shavings, etc. ? Straw just lies there and stinks but it doesn't actually do much else.

Don't know who you were talking to here Bee..... IF it was me, it's pine straw that I am using. I think I just said straw on my post for short.

 

[Beekissed]

Nope....talking to Fowl Wench and her ammonia smellin' straw bedding.

 

[Fowl Wench]

Ha ha. I guess considering the ammonia smell I literally am a Fowl Wench. That's funny. Ok Beekissed, thanks for the advice. I added some dry leaves this afternoon and tossed that $h*¥ around in there. Hope that helps. I'm gonna go get some hay tomorrow also. Thank you!

 

[RoseMarie1]

Nope....talking to Fowl Wench and her ammonia smellin' straw bedding.

oh ok.

 

[yogifink]

Quote:
Instead of using it directly on them, provide a dust bath and mix into the sand or what ever you put in the bath.

 

[Fowl Wench]

Y

Quote:
Instead of using it directly on them, provide a dust bath and mix into the sand or what ever you put in the bath.

Yes that does sound easier. Thanks for the idea!