Sweet PDZ

[Calima]

I live in the city and don't want my neighbors to complain about smelling my chickens. Does Sweet PDZ really work? Can I use it in the chicken coop and in the run area? How do I use it, do I mix it with sand or pine shavings? How often does it need to be changed/replaced?

 

[Chipper Chicken]

Although I'm sorry you have the powdered kind, I'm glad you discovered it now.

Yeah, seems like most kids today are more into smartphones than being smart......

If you hadn't mentioned the problem that prompted me to ask, I probably would have forgotten that there were two grades by the time I finally get around to buying it!
Thanks so much for letting me know.

 

[FridayYet]

On my poop boards I use a mix of granulated PDZ, coarse sand, and pelletized gypsum. It gets scooped once or twice a week and the droppings go into the compost pile.

Love it, works well for me, and I would recommend it to others.

 

[bevis]

I have been using sweet pdz for over a year now and its a god send product.
Its safe around the animals and it absorbs all the ammonia from the waste.
I have it 2 to 3 inches deep under their roost board and its about 30 feet
of length. its expensive to keep it that deep but cleaning is a breeze with
a 5 gallon bucket and a big kitty litter scoop daily. its worth EVERY PENNY
i pay for it. I wish i had another option around here for an off brand zeolite
but Sweet PDZ is the brand that TSC and all the local feed and farm places carry here in Florida

 

[mrwoodboat]

I use it in all my pens- it works great!! Since I put straw down in my pens, I just broadcast the PDZ first, then spread straw out- I have about 45 birds and go through about 1 bag a year.

 

[Monguire]

Sweet PDZ is fantastic. Make sure to get the granulated (looks like kitty litter) versus the powdered (have NEVER seen this available but some on these forums have and it is atrocious dust-wise) and I'd still wear a mask when scooping as it kicks up a lot of dust. It's also expensive...depending on your coop/run size, it could be cost prohibitive. If your run is covered, coarse sand might be a cheaper alternative and almost as good as the PDZ for drying out the poop (hence keeping odor to a minimum).

My coop is 8x12 (part of a 12x20 shed) and I have two inches of sand on the floor. About 3 feet up I have two U-shaped poop-boards (one on each side of coop) that contain an inch of Sweet PDZ. Three inches above the Sweet PDZ are my 2x4 roosts also in a U-shape. Every day or two we scoop the poop-boards like kitty litter and also pick up any huge offending turdlings from the sand floor. What we don't get off the sand, dries up and breaks down with the pitter-patter of little chicken feet. There is NO smell in our coop. Just dust...a WHOLE LOT of dust.

The run is 12x16 and covered with smoke-colored polycarb maintaining a bright and dry environment. The run is 70% coarse sand, 30% dirt (well, that hard nasty red clay that passes for dirt in Virginia anyway). The poop in the run desiccates quickly and breaks down into the mix with no smell. I occasionally rake the surface just to help the process along.

Pros:

• Low-maintenance. Sand/PDZ is easier than pine shavings as there is no mucking out the coop and replacing with fresh bedding. More PDZ is added to poop boards only as needed to replace that which is scooped away. Sand is never replaced. If it get to a point where I even start noticing any kind of odor coming from floor, i'll just sprinkle some PDZ onto the sand to let the chooks work into the mix. If that isn't enough, will consider replacement of sand but i don't anticipate having to do that more often than every 5-10 years or so.
• Good for the chooks. Sand/PDZ provide natural exfoliation for their feet, no moisture to be trapped in traditional bedding (shavings), source of grit (the pebbles in coarse sand and even the PDZ to a much lesser extent)

Cons:

• VERY dusty environment...both inside coop and in the run. I'm actually considering sprinkling water occasionally just to keep dust down. Should ALWAYS wear a mask when scooping poop or raking as it REALLY stirs things up. All that particulate cannot be good for our lungs.
• Not as "cozy" as an environment with proper bedding (shavings). The shavings would provide some warmth I'd think if the chooks were ever so inclined to lay down. The sand just seems very "sterile" and unwelcoming.

 

[Cacique500]

We use only Sweet PDZ ...in the entire coop and the covered portion of our run. The last run section that isn't covered is sand...and I hate that section. The sand gets wet and it's just a PITA to get it clean.

The PDZ covered areas are super easy to keep clean (I use a large stir fry thingy i found on amazon) and I can clean the entire coop and run in about 10 minutes once a week (5 hens). NO smell at all. Every other week I'll sprinkle a little more PDX around the coop and run just to refreshen and replace it. If the girls would stop digging to china I'd be able to keep more of it INSIDE the run!

The PDZ also dessicates the poop and I think this helps keep the flies down in summer.

 

[Chickalish]

I have used Sweet PDZ all summer since my chicks graduated to the coop. No smell what-so-ever! GREAT STUFF, right? Not so fast! On occasion I sneak out there at night and pick a girl off the roost and snuggle her and put her back and if she flaps a bit the stuff will fill the air so I ventilate by swaying the door back and forth to pull in fresh air and suck that out. I had NO idea to the extent that it hangs in the air until the other night while I was out I heard a bustle in the coop for a sec so I went to see what the fuss was up, opened the door and there was a cloud of it hanging in the air! Not settling on it's own, but just a thick cloud hanging for them to breathe in, so I waited and waited aaaaaaaand waited, and lo and behold it doesn't settle easily let me tell ya.Well I had previously done some reading on chicken lungs and respiratory infections because they have developed a blackening in the nostrils and slight darkening of the beak and some beak crustiness near their little nostrils as well. And you do NOT want to mess with something in the air as their lungs and not designed like ours at all and they can't handle this stuff in the air at all from what I had read. So long story short, I removed it and their nostrils are finally improving, in 2 days I might ad! Ok so tiny poo smell when i scoop in the AM but tha'ts it. I lined my poo board with linolium and feeling much safer now. Not to mention that I actually am liking that I can see what teir poop is all about as opposed to the white coated dried up poo the sweet pdz turned it into so that I couldn't inspect it for anything that might occur in their systems. So there you have it, my opinion on the powder puff called sweet PDZ

 

[Chipper Chicken]

I do appreciate that so many peeps here seem to love the stuff and advocate hardily for it. I'd just like them to also be aware fo the other side of the coin if they might be interested in knowing that some heath concerns may come along with it's use. That being said, YES it does cut out odor if you wait long periods between coop cleanings. But in cleaning my coop daily it is a very poor choice given the discovery of potential lung damage vs VERY minor morning odor that is remedied in minutes for the rest of the day.

I'm planning on using this on my poop boards too, and what you say concerns me.
Is there any chance you got a bag of the powdered grade instead of the granulated? Thanks.

 

[Chickalish]

Well good news perhaps... I couldn't wait so I went out to the Chicken's storage shed with a flashlight.UGH...powder! I hope the results are very different with granular and I imagine they might be. I with that the peeps at the feed store had thought to mention there were 2 kinds since they knew I was getting it for my birds. Hmmm, perhaps they don't know the difference themselves. Well for anyone who has tried both if you can tell me if you have or have not noitced a significant difference in the sort of problem I had this summer that would be helpful to chime in with your opinion about it.