Deep bedding

[DaisyG2317]

Mine is also plywood with hardware cloth underneath the plywood. One sheet of linoleum is my flooring on top of the plywood. Makes for easy cleanup in the spring, the shovel just slides underneath everything.

Great, thanks for the info! I went in there today and stirred everything around and thought maybe i was doing something wrong by not scooping the poop, lol

 

[aart]

The terms 'deep litter' and 'deep bedding' are often misunderstood and misapplied.
I've always liked this explanation:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-method-with-this-coop.1075545/#post-16440037

 

[DaisyG2317]

Right now is a whole tsc bag of pine shavings because my husband was "helping" and dumped the whole cube in there lmao 6x6 coop with only 4 chickens so i suspect it will stay fresh for quite a while with little maintenance

 

[aart]

I discovered the Hemp product, it did everything it said it wood do and I don't have to clean, dispose or purchase any but maybe once a year. Plus because the product starts decomposing right away, it's a natural product that is great fertilizer for my garden, pasture, flower bed ect. the uses are endless. It doesn't smell at all which makes it easier to work with.

Curious how long you have been using the hemp?
How many birds, size of coop, climate, etc......pics are always good
No doubt it's much better at making 'garden soil' than wood shavings.

Oh, and I see you're fairly new here, so....
Welcome to BYC! @DMOTS
Where in this world are you located?
Climate, and time of year, is almost always a factor.
Please add your general geographical location to your profile.
It's easy to do, and then it's always there!

I thought the purpose of these forums was to share our experiences to help each other.

It is, but there will always be few that take offense like anywhere on the internet, you can always just scroll on by.

 

[KarynVA]

I use deep bedding without poop boards and I love it. The hens stir the bedding for me, as I give them their daily treat of scratch and mealworms inside the coop every afternoon. I never scoop or remove poop; and there is no smell. The poop is hard to find, actually.

Also, the roost I use is a 2X4 wrapped in newspaper, which I change out regularly; so I don't even scrape the roost.

 

[DaisyG2317]

The best of my understanding is that Deep Bedding is a dry process where an abundance of dry organic material absorbs the moisture from the poop to create a clean and odor-free environment while Deep Litter is a composting process (usually cold composting, but hot is possible), where there is moisture and, optimally, ground contact to introduce the beneficial microbes and organisms, where the poop and the organic material react, creating compost as an end product.

My in-town setup had Deep Bedding in the coop and Deep Litter in the run and never had an odor problem that a 3-4 inch layer of fresh, dry material couldn't solve.

Great explanation!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

adding to the litany (chorus, really) of those who do deep bedding/litter w/o poop boards, and whose chickens do most of the work of turning the material for them. Mostly straw, dried pasture clippings, some leaves.

In my case, the floor is hardieboard, so concrete and fiberglass basically. Before it gets too deep, or potentially gets too moist, my birds tend to kick it "downstairs" - the hen house is 3' off the ground, the ducks sleep underneath. At that point, the deep bedding becomes an addition to the deep litter.

 

[3KillerBs]

With deep bedding, do you stir all the poop as with deep litter and just freshen it up?

I don't stir it around because the chickens do this for me,

I use scratch or mealworms to encourage the chickens to dig around in the shavings.

I found that in my situation I had to top off shavings every couple weeks (or add leaves, pine straw, or whatever else I was mixing with my shavings). How often you need to stir, top off, and/or change the bedding will depend on the density of chickens and how deep you can accumulate bedding before it spills out.

 

[aart]

What is the difference in "Deep Bedding" and "Deep Litter". Is it using different product or is it a different process?

The terms 'deep litter' and 'deep bedding' are often misunderstood and misapplied.
I've always liked this explanation:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/th...-method-with-this-coop.1075545/#post-16440037

 

[3KillerBs]

So...my coop has a dirt floor and I may not be able to keep or totally dry in a rain. In that situation, Would you say Deep litter is best?

I'm very big on deep litter and deep bedding as a means of keeping chickens clean and odor-free with minimal labor input.

Ideally, the coop is kept thoroughly dry because damp chickens are unhappy chickens, but in a coop that can't be kept absolutely dry, such as an open-air coop in a warm, wet climate where ventilation is the key factor in chicken health, I can't think that any other system would work.