It's not a dry climate here lol. Humid with spring showers, and it rains all summer long, deluges. Thankfully sand doesnt wash away like mud, no nasty mudpuddles for the birds to drink out of neither.
Yellow sand dug out of borrow pits. I buy it by the dump truck load.
Sand stays on the cool side if there's shade, hot in direct sunlight, like at a beach. I dont know if it's an insulator or not.
Here are photos with sand inside my coops. As a matter of fact, I'm refreshing coops and pens with sand this coming Monday and Tuesday.
The first 2 pics are inside the carport coop. The 3rd and 4th pics are inside the shed coop (split in half for 2 different groups of chickens.) The last coop...
I clean my 4 coops early each morning. What makes easy cleaning is sand. Simply scoop the poop and put it in a bucket and dispose of it. Done.
Other than building coops to withstand strong storms including cat 1 hurricanes, ease of cleaning coops was a priority. It takes me about 30 minutes to...