Chicken run- best material for floor that's proven????

[ChickEngineer]

I started out with pine shavings in my run. What a mess, the wind and the girls spread it all over the patio. Changed to play sand and it's so much easier to maintain. Made a "pooper scooper" out of a piece of 1/4" HC and an old paint roller extension handle. Use a small plastic garden rake to rake the sand into the HC. Clean the run in minutes without having to bend over and don't pick up the sand. I took some pictures but not able to post them yet.

 

[gsim]

Quote:
Yes. They swallow the crushed granite grit you buy at the feed store. They are quite capable of finding what they need from coarse sand. They have to have grit in their crop because they cannot chew. The grit makes up somewhat for that.

gerry

Wow, if hubby gets thrown out he has a nice place to stay! Does it have cable?

No cable, but it has a phone line, fluorescent lights and an outlet for a ceiling fan that we have not yet installed.

Gerry

 

[gsim]

Quote:
They may lay eggs on the floor now and again, but if they have been using the nests, most eggs will still be in the nests. They will tend to lay eggs in dark corners if they lay them on the floor in the litter. I stopped that by placing two plywood scraps in the two dark corners of my coop , beneath the two larger of the poop boards. It worked as they have never laid any eggs on those scraps of plywood.

Gerry

 

[gsim]

perchie.girl :

Quote:
What about Concrete blocks designed for holding back soil. Those decorative kind. The ones from Home depot are eight inches high. They lock together too once you pack the dirt behind them.

http://www.homedepot.com/h_d1/N-5yc...splay?langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Concrete blocks are good, but expensive compared to other remedies. I need to be able to remove a portion of the terracing to be able to get riding mower and garden cart down to lowest corner of run. I remove silt there 4 times per year currently. Hope by terracing to cut that down to once a year. I did set some old cinder blocks I had down there in level trenches to prevent the silt from washing thru the fence and shorting out the hot wire/fence charging system. also I donot want to lose that topsoil. The chooks love it when I do that because they have piles of dirt to root around in afterwards. I always haul it to the upper, more flat part of the run. I think the terracing will cut back that chore by a lot. Removing the silt from terraces will be easier as they will not be so far down the hill. Can easily do them with wheelbarrow and shovel alone, not needing garden tractor and cart for that part of it. A real PIA that I did not anticipate. My run is nearly 2,000 sq ft.

Gerry

 

[tracypie]

I have sand in my run right now but when it gets wet it is gross. It smells and never really drys out to sand again. How do you keep your sand fresh?

 

[gsim]

I don't have any sand in there. It is just bare dirt, and it slopes 5 to 10 degrees. I now have three terraces which do a great job of limiting erosion. My run never stinks, but it is large @ 1900 square feet and for 10 layers currently.

I suppose really flat runs can smell. I don't have any ideas really, except to increase the size. The rain must take all of the odor away in my case. My coop never stinks either. But in the AM when I open the pop doors and go in to scrape the poop boards I can smell the poop. The odor vanishes in minutes after I finish cleaning the coop each AM. It takes me around 3 minutes total each day. We use the deep litter method and I use grass clippings for litter.

I do put in a ton of coarse sand each year for a path from the gate to the coop so as to prevent either of us from slipping and falling in rainy weather. I also doubles as grit for the chooks being as they can pick out the sizes they want to swallow. I always get the coarse sand from the crusher. It is the same stuff used in concrete, minus the bigger pieces of gravel.

 

[spdykat]

Can you tell me what kind of coarse organic material you recommend? My run is on wood and the wood is wet now with the rains. I had sand which was great all summer/fall but is now a stinky
disgusting mess. I know I haven't got a chance of getting it bone dry before the rains stop, but I don't like having the girls running around in mud either so I'm going to muck the run out tomorrow. Is there a particular grade of sand I should have used that might have avoided the current mess? Also I am trying to devise a way to divert the water but so far am not having a lot of luck, the rain just permeates even with tarps covering the run.---thanks!

 

[ducks4you]

You know, chickens are just plain messy, and you have to clean up after them. I also keep horses and I often sweep the aisles and throw that in the run during the winter. In the summer I mow with a bag mower and throw that in for my birds. When you remove either of them and pile it up it makes the most wonderful and rich mulch after seasoning. At least they don't pass seeds!
Digging and cleaning is good for the soul. A good wheelbarrow helps, too.

 

[bangarain]

We were using koop clean to test it out but it is impossible to clean without just taking everything out, any scratch sinks to the bottom and is completely lost, and plain dirt keeps a smell...wondering if sand or pine shavings would be better and easier to clean and maintain.

 

[spdykat]

I ended up cleaning everything out, then following someone else's advice on this thread and using sand and gravel mixed. Even in the El Nino rains we're finally getting, it is draining fine and there is no muck on the floor like there was with my summertime mix of sand and straw. I also mixed in some food grade diatomaceous earth (got it from the feed store) and it helps break down the poops. I am very happy with this result! I sift out the biggest lumps of poops every couple days and it's been great.