Deep litter help

[Elmochook]

Try looking for some sawdust. We bought ours from a local mulch place but you could get some for free or cheap at lumber yards, lowes/home depot/wood shop laces, etc.

Haha i asked home depot about their pallets the other day and the dude thought i was crazy for wanting them for free ( they are NICE LOL) never thought about all the saw dust there

 

[Folly's place]

Be careful about the wood types in that free sawdust; avoid any from treated lumber, plywood, particle board, black walnut, or anything else that's not good in the coop. Mary

 

[lazy gardener]

I used to use only wood chips but then i read something about them being toxic so i chunked a whole cube of that crap on my compost pile. I cant remember if it was cedar or pine but im thinking they were pine. I have 2 acres of very wild land so i can find tons of stuff to layer in there. Sticks? No real green grass clipping right now so thats out... its mostly sticks and leafs.

Wood chips (as in chipped trees from a tree service company) are not toxic. However, fresh chips may have a lot of tannins in them. This may be what you was wondering about??? If at all possible it's best to let chips age for a while to leach out the tannins, and allow them to start breaking down. A combination of materials: wood chips, hay, straw, leaves, garden debris, grass clippings will make a nice light fluffy mix that will break down well. I avoid wood SHAVINGS, and only use them when my access to natural materials is limited. Shavings are simply too high in carbon, and they take forever to break down. Sawdust would be better than shavings for your DL.

 

[Elmochook]

Well i filled a wheel barrow with all kinds of goodies off the top of my compost pile and they were all so excited lol! They instantly started tilling it all up for me and Wilma found a mushroom and munched it down.

Thank yall for the tips and tricks.

 

[45pro]

As far as deep litter goes, I have access to dumptrucks full of sawdust. The only issue I have is a small percentage of the sawdust(maybe 5%) comes from cutting treated lumber. Would this be a no go for using it as deep litter with a small percentage of it being treated? I want to try sawdust with maybe some grass shavings added to create a deep litter for my old shed which is going to become my new coop next spring. What are your thoughts?

 

[Elmochook]

As far as deep litter goes, I have access to dumptrucks full of sawdust. The only issue I have is a small percentage of the sawdust(maybe 5%) comes from cutting treated lumber. Would this be a no go for using it as deep litter with a small percentage of it being treated? I want to try sawdust with maybe some grass shavings added to create a deep litter for my old shed which is going to become my new coop next spring. What are your thoughts?

From what i understand it doesnt take long to break down the toxins in treated lumber... Could you possibly set it somewhere on your property and let it "mature" so to speak?

 

[lazy gardener]

Treated lumber is toxic lumber. If it goes into your DL, your birds will be ingesting it as they work through the DL. Not to mention the soil and microbial/macrobe contamination. I would absolutely not bring such sawdust onto my property.

 

[Elmochook]

Treated lumber is toxic lumber. If it goes into your DL, your birds will be ingesting it as they work through the DL. Not to mention the soil and microbial/macrobe contamination. I would absolutely not bring such sawdust onto my property.

oops my bad. Im clearly a noob and did not know that.

 

[Elmochook]

And now i feel bad about all the salvaged wood i use in my coops... I never googled what different types of wood are and most of the stuff i have is either cca 2x4 or pallets i got from many different sources.

 

[lazy gardener]

Pallet wood will either be Pressure Treated, or heat treated. Any pallet wood, or other trash wood (stickers and such) that I scavenge, I look for the HT labeling on it that indicates that the wood is heat treated. I leave PT wood behind. If you paint your PT wood, that will help to seal the chemicals in.