chicken run ground materials and enrichment?

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rosemarythyme said:
3KillerBs described it well. Just to further explain, it's what I meant when I suggested adding additional organic matter in with the wood chips. The dried leaves and grasses and weeds will compost down between the chips, breaking down poop and eating up odor.
Click to expand...
I'm new...so help me please understand.
I'm waiting on woodchip guy and weather to cooperate.
In the meantime, my 4 bantam chicks have eaten the majority of clover n grass n run and underneath small coop.
We've had a lot of rain lately so to help with excess moisture I've thrown in a few pine shavings. I've also thrown in grass trimmings.
My question is should I have let the grass trimmings DRY out before throwing them in to run?
What other compost matter can I use in run flooring?
Can I use:
  • Deadheads
  • Banana peels (fresh or dried)
  • Weeds with roots attached
These were things I already have on hand but wasn't sure I could use or not.
Thank you!
 
laneaj said:
My question is should I have let the grass trimmings DRY out before throwing them in to run?
What other compost matter can I use in run flooring?
Can I use:
  • Deadheads
  • Banana peels (fresh or dried)
  • Weeds with roots attached
Click to expand...

Yes, you should let the grass clippings dry. Both because chicks can gorge on fresh grass clippings and develop impacted crops due to over-eating long, fibrous material (not a problem when they nip chick-sized bites off grass that's firmly attached to the ground by the roots), and because a pile of wet, fresh grass clippings will often rot in a stinky, slimy mess.

As long as the flowers you're deadheading are non-toxic it's fine to throw the deadheads into the run.

My chickens don't care for bananas or their peels, but in my large run a few banana peels will become one with the bedding and compost down eventually. Since they don't eat them I don't put much in at once.

Once my chickens had devastated their run the (nontoxic), weeds I pull from my garden and my yard became their main source of greenery. I just dump it all in -- they eat what they eat and the rest becomes one with the bedding.

HOWEVER, just like grass you can have the problem of too much tough, fibrous material causing crop impaction, especially with chicks so beware anything particularly stemmy.
 
3KillerBs said:
Yes, you should let the grass clippings dry. Both because chicks can gorge on fresh grass clippings and develop impacted crops due to over-eating long, fibrous material (not a problem when they nip chick-sized bites off grass that's firmly attached to the ground by the roots), and because a pile of wet, fresh grass clippings will often rot in a stinky, slimy mess.

As long as the flowers you're deadheading are non-toxic it's fine to throw the deadheads into the run.

My chickens don't care for bananas or their peels, but in my large run a few banana peels will become one with the bedding and compost down eventually. Since they don't eat them I don't put much in at once.

Once my chickens had devastated their run the (nontoxic), weeds I pull from my garden and my yard became their main source of greenery. I just dump it all in -- they eat what they eat and the rest becomes one with the bedding.

HOWEVER, just like grass you can have the problem of too much tough, fibrous material causing crop impaction, especially with chicks so beware anything particularly stemmy.
Click to expand...
My chicks are 5 wks old...should have double checked this BEFORE spreading around the damp grass clippings. It was only small amount and they didn't seem interested in it at all. U think they'll be ok.

Oh and once they top off the weeds in their run and just leave the stems standing in ground - do I need to do anything with those or are they fine with just remaining in run? It's those little white blossom looking weeds that grow all in yards.
 
laneaj said:
My chicks are 5 wks old...should have double checked this BEFORE spreading around the damp grass clippings. It was only small amount and they didn't seem interested in it at all. U think they'll be ok.

Oh and once they top off the weeds in their run and just leave the stems standing in ground - do I need to do anything with those or are they fine with just remaining in run? It's those little white blossom looking weeds that grow all in yards.
Click to expand...

They'll have great fun digging what's left of the weeds up and destroying the roots in their never-ending quest to create the perfect dustbath. :D

My chickens are amazing earth-movers.
 
laneaj said:
Speaking of dust bath...do I need to place container in the run for this purpose or just let em make their own hole in the ground over time?
Click to expand...

I just let them dig.

My ground is mostly fine sand so it makes good dust baths. Some people like to provide a container of some kind with a special mix of some kind. Sometimes the chickens use it and sometimes they don't.
 
I have builder's sand in my coop that my birds dust bathe in. My run roof is hw cloth, so no solid roof. I put leftover pine pellets over dirt with a ton of dried leaves from our yard. We are surrounded by woods so it just made sense to use what we would've burned. We have had a very rainy week here, I will need to put more leaves in once everything dries up. Wood chips are a good idea, I might check into it.

I put a lot of multi-level enrichment things in our run. A large pallet, lots of stumps, several tiers of roosting bars, a ladder, an old stool, ect.
 

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