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REALLY glad to know about the DE. I'll step up my use, and maybe change to sand instead of shavings? What do you think?
I have mixed feelings about the sand. My DW loves it, but she doesn't clean the coop. Originally, the coop had our hard-pack dirt as a floor and it was very easy to rake up the droppings into a dustpan and carry out (which I did every other day). Now we have sand on the floor and I have to sift the droppings from it and I'm not too happy about that. I think the chickens like it though, so it stays. If you don't clean that often it's a pretty good cover on the ground to keep things dry and soft for chicken feet. It also might be better if you have more chickens than I do. I use shavings in the elevated part of my coop and I'm very pleased with that. I probably wouldn't ever use shavings on the ground, just because of the messiness they would cause with my coop situation. I used to be very skeptical about the effectiveness of DE and I still am about certain uses (e.g. using it internally as a wormer), but I've come to realize that it's very effective at controlling many creepy crawlies here in our low humidity environment.
I find the sand easy to rake. I had sod, they killed it, I thought "OK, I'll just wet it down to increase the humidity", now it's stinky. Ugh. I keep shavings in the coop, they were messy so I put a plywood skirt around the bottom of the coop. Now the shavings are contained and I'm looking forward to the deep litter compost.
Gallo Speaking of which, I just turned my compost and finally had a little pile to use. Which made me think about gardening and what a dismal failure it was this year. Do you have a link about your sunken garden? I really think that's the way to go rather than my beautiful raised beds. Next spring I'll put green cotton and Moringa in the raised beds, they LIKE the heat.
