Coop Quandry

[WillsMama93]

I need a little advice. My son and I are new to chickens, and we have started out with just 2 bantams, but we are going to be expanding our family in the coming months. Our coop will not be very large, and the max chickens we are limiting ourselves to is 10 total.
My quandry concerns the deep litter method. I have planned on using the basic set up from the 2 story coop on the coop picture page, but adding 2x6 boards around the bottom story to allow for litter containment. We live in Louisiana, and the humidity can get high here.. is the deep litter method the best idea for our coop? What other options could we use? I know cleaning the shavings out once a year would not be enough for this size coop, as I don't want to get the litter too deep for our bantams.
I need feedback please!! There are so many wonderful chicken experts here, and everyone has been so helpful already!

 

[horsewishr]

I can't answer your question, but I just wanted to tell you that I've got a son named Will, too. He was born in 93.

Edited to add:
I've got chickens named Lily and Roxie, and I'm going to STEAL the name Lola for another chickie. I love it!

 

[ruth]

I would build a raised coop with a hardware cloth floor. That way droppings drop to the ground and can be raked out later and the coop's wire floor can just be hosed out. If raised enough (placed on legs) so that the chicks can get under the coop it wil also provide additional shelter from our sweltering heat and humidity. Take a look at my coop page and you'll see what we used - we were in Covington at the time. Having it raised also helped with the constant rainfall we had. Sometimes the yard would be flooded but the coop sat high and dry. You don't get much freezing weather there but you get more cold weather than we did in the N.O. area so on cold nights I would put hay on wire floor to block any drafts. On hot days it stayed so nice and cool in their coop that my free ranging chickens could often be found sitting on their coop floor instead of outside.

 

[LynneP]

There are so many good ideas in the coop section, which is where I learned to design a droppings shelf for under the roosts. Whether you use deep litter or not, this method will cut down on ammonia and moisture substantially. Some of the things you can use on that shelf are DE, Stable Boy, kitty litter, peat moss...absorbant materials that cut down on odor and pests and which can be scraped into a bucket daily.

 

[twigg]

We live in Louisiana, and the humidity can get high here..

Humidity is best dealt with by high level ventilation ... it doesn't matter which litter system you are using.

Even in areas of low RH, poor ventilation can make for unhappy chickens.​

 

[WillsMama93]

Can using Kitty litter under the roosts hurt them, if they peck at the litter?