Coop Bedding?

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There are pros and cons to every option out there - and everyone has their favorite or the option that they would "never use" --- ultimately, it's going to be a matter of trial and error to find which works best for you, your management style and your birds.
*I* use deep litter method (DLM) using pine shavings on the coop floor - and a poop board lined with PDZ. In the past (the flocks I kept when I was growing up) we bedded the coop with straw and I much prefer the shavings over that. I am not fan of smaller particle stuff (ie sawdust) as I like having a lot of air movement through the coop in the summer and smaller/lighter particles get picked up too much in that, the shavings are large/heavy enough they don't blow around.
Things to consider in your own pro/con list:
what size is your coop/will it be --- does it allow you to enter into the coop and stand up/move about or is it designed in a way that you will have to reach in to clean? how heavily stocked is the coop going to be? How much time, daily, do you plan to give to coop maintenance?
 
VH Chicken Farm said:
We use "sawdust" from a local saw mill. It is more like little chips than it is dust. They allow us to go there and shovel as much as we want and only charge a few bucks for a garbage bag full. We keep it about 3-4" deep on the coop floor and it works very nice in our 8' x 8' coop. It sifts really well with the sifter shovel we made. We had used pine chips which worked OK too, but we found the sawdust chips keeps it dryer, is easy to sift with our sifter shovel and just keeps the whole house cleaner and smelling just fine. It lasts much longer between clean outs too. We are pretty fussy about the coop being clean, dry and no stench. It only takes a few minutes to clean out every morning when we let the birds (19) out, and keeps it smelling better. We do have dropping catchers under the roost's as well. We pull them out and scrape the droppings right onto the sawdust chips on the floor. Then we use the sifter shovel and clean it right up. We bought our aluminum scoop shovel at Harbor Freight for $20 and used the 20% off coupon so it was around $16. We then measured the spacing both vertically and horizontally on the back of the
shovel and drilled a hole at every intersection. The only sifter shovel I could find on line was $90 + Shipping. So this works well, just took a little effort. Good luck.
Click to expand...
That shovel is great, and is making consider changing from shavings. Being able to just shift out the poop seems really nice but there was no way I would want to do it with just a cat litter scooper (I have 20 birds right now). How dusty is it, though? What do you do with your poop?
 
Couple people in our climate zone replied. You might want to shout out your question on a local thread for best practice in our environment.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/newsearch?search=southern+California

ETA what works well in WI, MD and IN, the Midwest, or east coast may not be best practice here in So Cal. Like ole grey Mare said, there are pros and cons. How big is your coop? what design? how often will you clean? Everything factors in.
 
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Well if you're in Southern California, I would definitely use sand, it will help keep your chickens cool.
 
Thank you so much everyone for your advice!

My coop is currently in the works but basically:





It is 10 feet high, and 12 feet by 12 feet. When we bought the house, it was already there. It has cement floors and insulated walls! There were no windows though, so I cut a large window in the door and the wall opposite it then screwed hardware cloth on both of them. I also purchased a fan so that I will face out the window opposite the door so air is sucked in. Basically it looks like a house inside but thanks to the cement floor and how it's insulated - it's incredibly cool inside even though it's been in the 100's in Southern California. They will be free ranging all day though and just sleeping in there. Since there are cement floors, and my hose reaches in, I'm not really worried since if worse comes to worse, I can always take everything out and hose it down. Right now I'm leaning towards buying Koop Clean and having dropping boards with zeolite underneath the roost because watching them scratch around the pine in their brooder right now gives me joy. They're all way too young right now to even be in the coop. If you look in my signature, you'll get the ages of my girls.
 
Love your reply!!
My sand in my coop is tiny bits of poop and dirty sand! Not the miracle clean lots of other chicken keepers talk about!
Pus, where do you put all that poopy sand once its dirty?

Going back to shavings this afternoon!

Thanks!
 

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