Bedding

[ekdotin]

What is exactly the problem about the chickens eating the wood shavings?

 

[ellend]

I'm in northern Ohio (cold, damp, sometimes below 0 F) I use sand, but I use a SweeterHeater plugged into a thermocube so that it turns on around freezing and off if it reaches 50. Roost also is longer than needed for the birds, and flat and wide with rounded edges, instead of round, to keep their toes under their fluff instead of exposed while wrapped around a round roost. I work on keeping the coop above 32 deg. F.. The sand has the advantage of not holding moisture, so they don't get frostbite, I can clean it in 1 minute (small coop,) I don't have to constantly buy and replace it, and ****mites don't do as well with sand as in shavings*****

We had a huge, LONG battle with mites, having to use lots of toxic chemicals to FINALLY rid the girls of them (and yes, I clean the coop daily!) and I don't ever want to go through that again!

 

[John-1948]

Even tho I am in Central Florida - I still feel sorry for the birds to put their belly on a cold floor !!!
I only have two nest boxes now as two hens just hatched a dozed babies each this week.
The bigger boys n girls roost on their perches at night.
Next week, I will put the small size heating pad under the box on LOW....
I have just a 1/4" plywood box with some big shavings in it. then, 3/4" foam under the box.
So I will put the warmer between the plywood box and the foam.
and it is a MUST to cover the edges of the foam with some kind of tape so they won't eat it.

The only problem I see is that they will get SPOILED from having a toasty box to sleep in on
cold nights then there is not enough room for 12 half grown chicks and mommy too. LOL LOL
so I have to work on Plan B for all of them in a heated coop in a couple of weeks.

 

[ellend]

After having a brooder filled with pine shavings in my garage for 7 weeks, everything in there is covered with a thick layer of dust. My wife thinks it is caused by the pine shavings. Are pine shavings causing all the dust or is dust just part of having chickens?

It's both. Chickens themselves are "dusty." Shavings are too, especially as they break down.

 

[ellend]

I use deep litter method in both the coop and run.

In the coop I use primarily pine shavings, but a good amount of the chopped straw from their nest boxes seems to get mixed in. I have one nest box that nobody ever lays in. Someone scratches it empty every few days. Go figure.

In the run I use primarily dried leaves, but also throw in weeds, trimmings, grass clippings, food scraps, and anything else that I would throw in a compost pile. If the shavings in the coop get too deep I pull some of them out into the run as well.

The two main reasons I choose not to use sand:

1. I have read dozens of people's comments about sand doing a great job of "keeping the smell down". What I don't hear from people using sand is that there is NO SMELL AT ALL. (My DLM experience has been no smell at all.)

2. People who use sand rave about the (5, 10, 30) minutes per day they spend managing their coop.

My daily chicken chores are:
Collect eggs
Let chickens out to free range (optional)
Put bowl of scraps in run (optional)
Throw handful of scratch into coop (optional)
Make sure door to run is closed and all chickens are in for the night. (Assuming the were let out)

My weekly chicken chores are:
Check food and water levels. Fill as needed.

My monthly chicken chores are:
Open a bag of pine shavings and dump in coop. (I don't even spread it around. The chickens take care of that.)

And that's it. I don't spend 10 minutes a MONTH on chicken chores. And there is NO smell. NONE. Not at all.

I can't IMAGINE having to scrape a poop board and scoop up/sift out droppings every day!!

My coop is small--a raised little Chinese piece-of-**** that I worked on to make better (it's the only thing that fits between the windows of my house, where I need it to be) with an attached "playpen" (a large iguana cage turned on it's side, plexiglass sided in winter, with a vented choroplast "roof." I have bantams. The enclosed and wire "roofed" run is 6x20, but they won't touch snow. It takes me 1 minute to sift the sand through a waterlily basket, and then I take cat-food bags of it to the community garden, since I'm not composting at the moment. My sand is NEVER wet, there's only about 1/4" in. sand at most, and there is no smell. The coop is always low humidity in freezing weather, and MITES don't like it. I was using shavings for years, and they always got poop stuck to their feet, it was expensive, and held too much moisture. If water spilled, the shavings had to be dumped. Mold grows in shavings, but not in sand. So, NO SMELL. FAST clean up, time I spend talking to the girls when the weather is bad and I otherwise wouldn't stand out there! And I still get to see their poop, to let me know if there are problems. (Yep, I'm really big on animal waste...you can learn a lot about your animals' health by familiarizing yourself with their bowel movements and toileting habit changes...) (No, I don't get out much...)

 

[ellend]

I live in zone 4, and I use grass hay. They love it, it keeps the coop smelling fresh, and no problems if they nibble it.

Be careful; hay molds quite easily, and that would kill your birds.
Cedar: DOES release toxins into the air, and especially into any water. Not good for MOST animals. Should never be used for small animal bedding, but retailers don't care...

 

[william1945]

shavings stick to my eggs too but i find it is the bedding

 

[RezChamp]

What is exactly the problem about the chickens eating the wood shavings?

Just like when I'm full of candy bars potatoe chips and soda pop. "I'm full! I don't feel like eating anything!" ..... even healthy food that's gona give the energy to do what needs to get done.

 

[Gecko Chick]

Hi LuckyLee,
Where is the best source of information for the DEEP LITTER METHOD? I've been hearing about it and I'm interested in their living in their own best surroundings. Also, can you forward your recipe for your cleaner? It sounds great. Thanks!!!

 

[T-traveler]

• I use sand in the run and have not had to do anything to it since I put it in (only a few months), but I don't expect to do anything except maybe once a year. I have 4 to 6 inches of sand over hard clay. I have a roof over the run and because it rains in Oregon occasionally (you may have heard that nasty rumor). Since the rain blows in through the wire sides, I installed a french drain along the two lower sides. As a result, the sand dries out quickly and the girls seem to love it underfoot.
• I use pine shavings in the hen house with the deep litter method and poo boards under the perches. I clean the poo boards twice a week (a 5 minute chore).
• Originally, we used pine shavings in the nesting boxes, but the girls didn't seem to like it. So, we changed half of the nesting boxes to straw and they all started using the nesting boxes with straw. We have since changed all nesting boxes to straw. The funny thing is - even though there are 8 nesting boxes, all the eggs get laid in two of them. They have hollowed-out places in all the others, but the eggs only appear in their favorite two.
• My total weekly chicken chores don't total more than 20 minutes per week (that's an average of about 3 minutes per day).