Cleaning my coop with horse pellets

[NatJ]

I have a concrete floor in my coop and have been using pine shavings. If I switch to horse stall pellets I've heard to wet it first? And how deep a layer should there be? Thanks.

Either way is fine.

If you get the pellets wet, they will fall apart into sawdust. If you leave them dry, they will stay as pellets until they do get wet (from chicken droppings or spilled water or any other source.)

Chickens do best with dry bedding, so if you use water to make the pellets fall apart, use just a small amount of water, and depending on how wet they get, you might consider letting the sawdust dry out afterward before you put it in the chicken coop.

For how deep the layer should be, that will partly come down to your own personal preference. At a minimum, the bedding should cover the floor, and deeper is nice because chickens like to scratch and dustbathe, and because it is softer for their feet than the concrete you are covering. Some people take out the old bedding frequently and replace it with new bedding, and they usually keep it fairly shallow (maybe between 1/2 inch and 3 inches). Some people keep adding new bedding, trying to add it at least as fast as the chickens dirty it, so the overall mix does not smell but keeps getting deeper and deeper. "Too deep" is when it causes problems like you bumping your head on the roof, or the chickens bumping their heads on perches or nestboxes, or the bedding falling out when you open the door (a board across the bottom of the doorway can help keep it in.)

 

[Sefirothe]

I use horse stall pellets on the floor of my coop. Its 6x8 and I put 6 bags down on the floor.....last November. I did not wet anything and there is linoleum down on the floor over the wood floor (which is also painted).

I started with 6 pullets, lost one this spring to sickness, rehomed one because she was causing strife in the flock. Then I added 5 day old chicks in May that were brooded in the coop on the floor in a wire crate so their messes went directly into the pellet bedding.

I havent picked up or scooped anything other than the poop from the poop board daily. Not all the poop goes on the board tho as some of the chickens like to roost on the lip of the board with their butts hanging over the floor. The pellets are stirred up and mixed around by the chicken's scratching thru it and any poop gets mixed in.

No flies or smell issues in the coop as of yet.

A lot of the pellets have broken down to sawdust at this point, not all tho. I'm not sure if the amount of dust I'm seeing is just normal chicken dust, or made worse by the dusty sawdust. Pretty sure the pellets do make the dust worse!

This pic was taken about a month ago, and you can see intact pellets and sawdust and not much poop.

 

[Gardening Gal]

Either way is fine.

If you get the pellets wet, they will fall apart into sawdust. If you leave them dry, they will stay as pellets until they do get wet (from chicken droppings or spilled water or any other source.)

Chickens do best with dry bedding, so if you use water to make the pellets fall apart, use just a small amount of water, and depending on how wet they get, you might consider letting the sawdust dry out afterward before you put it in the chicken coop.

For how deep the layer should be, that will partly come down to your own personal preference. At a minimum, the bedding should cover the floor, and deeper is nice because chickens like to scratch and dustbathe, and because it is softer for their feet than the concrete you are covering. Some people take out the old bedding frequently and replace it with new bedding, and they usually keep it fairly shallow (maybe between 1/2 inch and 3 inches). Some people keep adding new bedding, trying to add it at least as fast as the chickens dirty it, so the overall mix does not smell but keeps getting deeper and deeper. "Too deep" is when it causes problems like you bumping your head on the roof, or the chickens bumping their heads on perches or nestboxes, or the bedding falling out when you open the door (a board across the bottom of the doorway can help keep it in.)

Thank you! Lol..I wouldn't let it get that deep where I'd hit my head!