Chick brooder stinks!!!!

I have 13 cornish x's and 13 egg-leyers (Orpingtons, Australorps, and Rocks) in the brooder. They are separated by a partition down the middle. The egg-layers are good at scratching the pine shavings/dirt/etc... and keeping their area dry and non-smelly, but the cornish x's are not doing this much and making a big poop mess.

I have been mixing in new shavings and mixing it all up to hep dry it out, but it isn't stopping the problem. The brooder is in our house - we don't have an outside place for them where the cold temps are not a problem. Is there anything to help fix this - some kind of powder or something?

I know this is probably a 'meat chicken' topic, but that group gets relatively low traffic and this is getting bad fast - besides I'm sure any chicken type can have stinking litter issues.

Also, the stink is not an amonia smell - just not a good smell - maybe a little soury sweet? Hard to describe, but not amonia and not good. Could this be fermintation of the droppings and pine shavings?

Anyway, they are only 2 weeks old and it will be another 2 or 3 weeks from what I understand before they will be ready to go out. I still have to build a shed, then move stuff into the new shed from the coop to be, then modify the coop to be - to be a coop.

Any ideas would be good! Thanks in advance!

 

I thought of that - I guess I was trying to attempt the 'deep litter system' on the brooder, but maybe that needs to wait until they are in the coop

I think I'll be heading to brooder in a few to start re-locating chicks for a little bit! Chicks are going to be upset with me

Oh, well, they'll get over it 8)

Thanks!

 

All done - cleaned out the whole thing down to the plastic and put down new pine shavings. Much better!

Thanks everyone!