Deep litter method. A little confused.

[True Grit]

Quote:
Pine shaving are fine, it is cedar that is irritating to the chickens.

 

[Qi Chicken]

You want to use PINE shavings, NOT cedar. Use them in the coop. I would imagine that your boyfriend will not spend a lot of time in there, more because of the poultry dust than the shavings dust. Both are bad.

Use sand in the run. Don't do both. There is a big long thread on this where all the people that used both were complaining about how terrible it was. The sand washes between the gravel and then you can't scoop out the poop and you lose all your sand between the rocks.

I would use sand 100%. Just wait for a hard rain and most of the poop dissolves otherwise use a kitty litter scoop. Or you could hose it down. I have been thinking about doing that here. We have a small place near the door that we put a lot of gravel under the door to even out the space beneath it and it is a mess. All the rest is pure sand although a few rocks have migrated in and it drives me crazy.

I went to school in Eugene. Ducks are kicking butt tonight!

 

[Turkeyrangler]

Quote:
I have a couple questions for you. I've been using the DLM without a problem. By smell, what do you mean, smell or ammonia?? No matter what you will have some smell. What you don't want is the ammonia smell. How deep are your shavings?? Poop smells, but when I use at least 6 inches of shavings and DE in the coop I have had no smell other than bird smell since June. I turn the shavings every week, add some shaving every couple weeks to a month as needed. I have had no smell issues other than the usual bird smell and not bad at all (can't smell it outside the coop), no flys, no mites, no lice, no nothing in the coop. I rack the run every week and scrape the roosts at least twice a week. All the birds appear to be happy, healthy and well fed. The coop is well ventilated so no moisture issues. I don't plan to clean the coop out until spring. By then it should be at least a foot deep in shavings and poop. Everything will be composted and put in the garden at that time. My garden should kick butt next year....

 

[geebs]

Sand is my fave for a wet climate

 

[Dora'smom]

Hey, I'm in Oregon, too. Up near Portland.
I use wood pellets for bedding in the coop. They turn to sawdust if they get wet, but it's not a problem. I do kind-of a modified deep litter, adding in pellets and food-grade DE periodically, and completely clean every couple of months.
We have a covered dirt run, which I also sprinkle with DE, and I add in grass clippings, leaves, sometimes a bale of alfalfa for them to jump on and play with, or eat, if they want.
I've heard a lot about sand in the run, but haven't tried it yet, though once the girls have eaten down the new run, I may dig it down a bit and try sand there.
I think it's great you are really trying to educate yourself about the options, and are open to learning what might work best for you. you'll make an intelligent chicken-owner. Good luck.

 

[Lisa202]

I have a question...if the deep litter ends up to be about a foot deep by spring, wouldn't that erode the wooden walls in the coop? I had compost up against a fence and the damage is really bad. I have to replace that section of fence now. This took a while to happen, but won't it eventually do the same thing to the coop?

 

[WoodlandWoman]

Unscraped poop boards can be stinky. That's been a problem for some other people that have posted in the past. Changing to daily scraping seemed to take care of the problem for them. Try scraping your poop board daily, instead of letting it build up over several days.

For a run in a wet area, it's hard to beat a thick layer of sand. Just install boards around the outside edge to contain the sand, so it doesn't wash out, since it will be on top of concrete. If your run has a solid roof and stays dry, you can rake it to clean it. In a small run, you can even use those little sets made for dog clean-up, that have the little rake and pan. If it rains a lot, directly onto the sand, that may be enough to keep it clean, depending on how high a density of chickens you have in it and whether they're in there all day or free ranging.

With the DLM, you don't need the litter to be bone dry. Bone dry litter will be dustier and not compost at all. You just don't want it to be too wet. Wet litter is stinky. In an established deep litter coop, if you start to smell ammonia, you normally need to add more new wood shavings to it. I normally spread a light layer where it needs it most and the chickens even it out as they go about their business in the coop. This restores the carbon to nitrogen balance and improves the moisture content in a litter that's too wet. If it's a freshly cleaned coop and you decided to use the method where you add a lot more litter than you need at the beginning, then you need to stir, to bring up the clean dry shavings from the bottom. I don't do it that way, as it's more work and I like to have the clean shavings on the top layer, with the composting shavings down below.

If you read about compost piles for the garden, the wood shavings used for the litter are the dry, brown, carbon ingredient and the chicken poop is the wet, high nitrogen, green ingredient. In a garden compost pile, if it has too many brown ingredients or it's too dry, it doesn't compost. If it has too many greens or it's too wet, it's also stinky. The main difference between a garden compost pile and a chicken coop is that in a coop, most people are aiming for a cooler, slower compost process, rather than the really hot compost pile most gardeners are looking for. Although, I also often have a cool, slow compost pile in my garden, in addition to a hotter pile. Composting is about giving the microbes the food and moisture they need, as they process the ingredients into compost. When you manage compost so that the microbes are very active, they generate a lot of heat, so it's called a hot pile. When you manage it so that the microbes are less active and work at a slower pace, it's called a cool pile. Cool piles don't have the high heat that sterilizes weed seeds or viruses, but still eventually turns into lovely, useful compost.

 

[True Grit]

Quote:
I have a couple questions for you. I've been using the DLM without a problem. By smell, what do you mean, smell or ammonia?? No matter what you will have some smell. What you don't want is the ammonia smell. How deep are your shavings?? Poop smells, but when I use at least 6 inches of shavings and DE in the coop I have had no smell other than bird smell since June. I turn the shavings every week, add some shaving every couple weeks to a month as needed. I have had no smell issues other than the usual bird smell and not bad at all (can't smell it outside the coop), no flys, no mites, no lice, no nothing in the coop. I rack the run every week and scrape the roosts at least twice a week. All the birds appear to be happy, healthy and well fed. The coop is well ventilated so no moisture issues. I don't plan to clean the coop out until spring. By then it should be at least a foot deep in shavings and poop. Everything will be composted and put in the garden at that time. My garden should kick butt next year....

Turkeywrangler, I might have had 4 inches when I cleaned it out. The smell was sharper than I liked so probably just edging on ammonia-like. I was turning the shavings a couple of times a week and adding new when it started to smell but then I got to the point where I didn't want to add more if it was still gonna smell. I'm not going to be able to get to 12 inches as my pop door is at about 6-8. I'm getting that 6 inches is not enough for the DLM? I think it is a good idea to scrap the poop board every morning as Woodlandwoman suggests.Aah there goes my favorite 5 minutes of sleep...

 

[jerseygirl1]

Quote:
That happened to me, also - I turned it every week, added DE, etc. and it accumulated a very ammonia smell, from I guess waste afdter only about three months into the winter. Now I clean mine out about three times a year, which is fine, but i also do not add a whole ton of shavings, sinceI think that added too much to the smell. I find that this way works well for me.

 

[jerseygirl1]

Also, rather than adding a poop board, I save all empty feed bags, shavings bags, kitty litter bags, etc. any type of large bag and put those under the roost where they poop. ONce a week I just throw them out and put new ones down. I also put a large rock on top of them so the hens don't drag them all over the coop. A BYC'er gave me that idea, and it works better than a poop board for me.