Sand in a run

[Earl Grey Sian]

Hi.

Firstly I'm very envious of the amount of space you all seem to have.
I live in avillage in Worcestershire, UK in a tiny thatched cottage with an equally tiny backyard.
The majority of the yard is concrete which my 3 hens have acces to for an hour or two per day (which they mostly spent running around as though posessed

and eating my shrubs!) For the rest of the time they have 24 hour access to a small 'L' shaped partly covered run with a plain soil floor. At the moment it has wood chips but it stays very damp (rains a lot in UK!). I want to replace the wood chips with sand as I understand this will drain better and therefore be less damp.

My questions are:

How deep does the sand need to be?

And

Providing I attempt to scoop the majority of the poop regularly how often will I need to change the sand?

Thanks, Siân

 

[Baymen Moe]

If you use the search feature and type in "sand" there is a ton of posts on it. I myself use sand and love it .

The sand in my run is about 6 inches deep. I do scoop some poop but a lot of it dries up and sort of composts itself. My run is 12x16ft and I shouldn't have to replace it for many years as long as I use good maintenance practices.

Talk about rain? The northeast part of the US has had rain for about 27 of the last 30 days. My run doesn't puddle and dries quickly when it's not raining.

Good luck,

Bill

 

[swedishfish]

I want to put sand in my run! We have had unusual rain in Utah lately. Which means, we've actually HAD rain. A lot of it. Since you get so much, you might want to put a layer of gravel under the sand for a bit more drainage! Won't it be cool to see the chicken tracks going everywhere?

 

[RachelFromTheBlackLagoon]

I don't exactly have sand in my run, but VERY sandy soil. My run is roofed but it still gets wet. However, it dries up in no time and I probably have about 3 or 4 inches of it covering my solid run floor.

 

[RendonRoo]

I live next to an old sand pit. Our soil is almost completely sand. My chicks love it, they dig and dust bath all the time.

Not to be ugly but i wish you ppl wouldn't talk about rain. We haven't had rain in over a month with 100 plus temps. Send yours our way if you don't want it. LOL.

 

[Sugar Sand Farm]

Name of our farm is Sugar Sand Farm Guess why. We have sand in all our runs as well as the coops. I don't have to do much but when it gets looking alittle worse for wear I rake it out. This takes care of any feathers,debri or poop that doesnt desolve. I find it helps with the smell as well. We have been getting alot of rain as well. It drys very fast and no puddles or flooding.

 

[cpa0912]

I had issues with all this rain in NY in my chicken run with water puddles and being all muddy. I put about 4 inches of sand in the run and under the coop and no more problems. My chickens love it. They love running around there and I always see them rolling around in it.

 

[JLMom]

Quote:
I'm sorry your haven't had rain in so long.

Trust me, if we could, we would gladly send it to you.
My tomato,parsley and yellow beans all died because of it. Only the basil survived. It is muddy and horrible here. We just spent almost $6,000 on a deck for our pool and haven't used it once. Have been running the filter for the pool plus cost of chemicals since end of May, and I have gone in once(kids go in though. They come out with blue lips. Not kidding, they are really blue)

My chickens are 9 weeks old, and some night I worry about them being cold outside!

 

[sojeo]

Curious about using sand in the coop. I have a linoleum floor over wood, would that be ok? Currently I am using shavings, thought I would use the DLM, but then read that it will not compost over linoleum and the woodchips take forever to compost for the garden. I'm liking the idea of sand more and more.

 

[MIKE555444]

I would guess that might be a bad idea for inside since I wouldn't think it would obsorb like shavings would?