Cleaning a run

[Ladies-Eight]

The straw breaks down into dirt fairly quickly.

Which is the best to use straw, hay, sand, or pine shavings in the run?

 

[imnukensc]

I've never cleaned out the run. I use leaves, grass clippings, pine straw, etc. Free and cheap.

 

[ValerieJ]

Which is the best to use straw, hay, sand, or pine shavings in the run?

I don't use sand, pine, or wood chips at all. There are a lot of people who do and hopefully they will respond to this. I spread straw on pathways that we humans use. Once we have created a path by repetitive use, the chickens then start using it too. We have a lot of rain, so the paths get a little muddy. That's when I go out with a bale of straw and spread it on the paths. I actually leave it in little clumps, broken down flakes, and let the chickens spread it. They love that.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I mean cleaning in general like chicken waste like when cleaning a chicken coop.

I clean my coop out once every 3 or 4 years and never clean my run out. Some clean their coop and/or run daily. That's why we ask questions like how big is it and how many chickens do you have. We all have different situations with climate, flock make-up, facilities, and so many other things there is no single answer that covers us all. The more you can tell us about your situation the more likely we can tell you something that will help you.

 

[aart]

Which is the best to use straw, hay, sand, or pine shavings in the run?

- My runs have semi-deep litter(cold composting), never clean anything out, just add smaller dry materials on occasion, add larger wood chippings as needed.
Aged ramial wood chippings are best IMO.

 

[Aunt Angus]

I like wood clippings, too, but I'll throw anything "brown" in there: lawn clippings, fallen leaves, pine shavings, straw, hemp, you name it. I raked it out once this year only because I had wormed my chickens and I was grossed out by the thought of wormy poop.

 

[culturalinfidel]

Once or twice a year I have been cleaning our run, ie digging down to start from "scratch" with fresh grass clippings and wood chips/hay. I leave the chicken manure out in our driveway and neighbors come and take what they need for their gardens. With our recent run addition, I dont see this happening as frequently as the run is just too big for this now.

 

[trumpeting_angel]

I use a mix of aged wood chips (landscapers and tree services are eager to give you all you can use, though they are fresh and need to be aged, composted, or thoroughly dried out), leaves, twigs, weeds, garden trimmings, pine cones, and bark. Sometimes pine shavings, when there was a shortage of other materials.

Some people dump out the soiled coop bedding into the run, to add to the composting materials. Maybe if my run were bigger, but it seems to have enough poop in it already.

In the part of my run with no roofing, too many leaves makes a mess when it rains a lot. So I add wood chips and pine cones when that happens.

 

[Wallysgirls]

Hmm now im curious. Sorry to hi-jack just a question. If you use pine shavings in the coop and also have poop boards, would you dump the pine shavings you clean out of the coop ( which is done a few times a year), into the run?

 

[K0k0shka]

- My runs have semi-deep litter(cold composting), never clean anything out, just add smaller dry materials on occasion, add larger wood chippings as needed.
Aged ramial wood chippings are best IMO.
But my runs are 500 sqft for 15-30 birds

Sorry for the somewhat off-topic aside... but even though I've seen this picture before, I JUST noticed that your dense hardware cloth doesn't go all the way up, and the rest of the fence actually looks to have very big openings between the wires... Has that been enough to stop predators? Do you get smaller animals squeezing through? Weasels and such... Fishers... whatever else is out there. I guess I've been hammered over the head about the 1/2" (or at least 1") hardware cloth on this forum so much that now I'm quite surprised to see this on the jedi's run fence