Cement floor?

[gpeck]

I am very interested in raising laying hens. I am new at this (love the site)
I have an 8 by 10 foot cement pad that once had a pavilion over it. Would the cement pad be a good choice for the chicken pen? I want to fence it in and build a coop next to it. Predators would not be able to dig under. I have a constant supply of cedar chips that I would put on the cement floor and clean / replace as needed. Is this a bad idea?
Thanks

 

[Williej]

I think the cedar chips are a allergen problem for chickens

 

[Folly's place]

I use pine chips, bagged for horse bedding. You could mix in a little cedar, but it's NOT a good choice as the only bedding. Mary

 

[gpeck]

Is the cement floor a bad choice?

 

[16 paws]

Is the cement floor a bad choice?

I have a cement floor in my coop. I use straw on my floor. It works great. The poo composts with the straw and I put more straw on top a few times a year. No problems with it at all.
Marie

 

[LEW in TN]

How many chickens do you wish to raise? I think the cement pad would be a good location for the coop. It would keep predators from tunneling in to the coop. Our chicken coop is on a cement floor with pine bedding. Here is a picture of the interior of a coop. We took about 1/3 of a utility/garden shed to be the coop and have a soil run for the daytime hours. We do put grass clippings, leaves and chipped up wood in the run. Our chickens enjoy digging through the items in the run to find bugs and worms. (by the way the nesting boxes are hung on the wall behind where I am taking the photo from)



Here they are in the run. We have a leaf/wood chipper now, so the leaves are not whole (as in this photo) but much finer when we put them in the run.