Hi, I'm still in the research stage -- don't even know yet if keeping chickens is legal in this town (I'm right in town too). So I'm asking questions about chicken keeping while DH tackles chicken legality.
Do any fellow residents of the southeast have any experience with pine straw* as bedding?
I know that as a garden mulch its light, airy, dry, and resistant to decay. Are those good characteristics in a chicken coop?
If it is inferior to pine shavings are the latter sufficiently superior to make up for the fact that shavings cost money while pine straw is free for the raking in my yard and free for the taking if I pull my garden cart down the street and get to the neighbor's piles before the town yard waste trucks do?
Does it make a difference that I'm planning a dirt-floor coop and that my ground is nearly pure quartz sand -- just like at the beach?
*Not straw at all. The 6-12+ inch shed needles of the loblolly and longleaf pine trees.
Do any fellow residents of the southeast have any experience with pine straw* as bedding?
I know that as a garden mulch its light, airy, dry, and resistant to decay. Are those good characteristics in a chicken coop?
If it is inferior to pine shavings are the latter sufficiently superior to make up for the fact that shavings cost money while pine straw is free for the raking in my yard and free for the taking if I pull my garden cart down the street and get to the neighbor's piles before the town yard waste trucks do?
Does it make a difference that I'm planning a dirt-floor coop and that my ground is nearly pure quartz sand -- just like at the beach?
*Not straw at all. The 6-12+ inch shed needles of the loblolly and longleaf pine trees.
