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It is absorbing the poop and keeping the smell down. The pine shavings dry out the poop so it doesn't end up rotting. If you use that method then you need to compost the litter in a conventional, moist, fashion before using it on your garden. I use two methods. I use dry litter (shredded paper - I have tons of confidential material to get rid of. Good thing the chooks can't read) in the hen house and change it often. There is not enough depth there for deep litter. I compost that stuff before use. I use deep litter in my run with loads of garden waste, regularly topped up and rained on so it decomposes on site. The bottom layers are ready for the garden when I clean it out.
Ok, so is the DLM not something that I should be doing? Before I was changing out the coop every month and putting new litter in. The problems with that was
that the used litter was starting to stack up and I was really wearing my self out. I heard about this method and was very excited to start this so that I can
enjoy my chickens a little bit more. Now I am hearing that this method is not really working in my coop because I have an elevated coop with a solid wood floor.
what is best to do then?
The beauty of DLM as producing compost is that you use a high carbon litter and the chickens add the nitrogen so by the time it is mature you have a great carbon/nitrogen mix so it decomposes very quickly to lovely rich brown garden food. If you change your litter too often you aren't adding enough poop to the carbon so this stuff will break down very slowly and you'll have piles of it laying around. If you want to keep changing it that often you can add something high nitrogen to it, like lawn clippings, and it will break down and be ready for the garden sooner. You need to keep it moist while it is decomposing too. I am a big fan of composting and I have a big garden so i am biased but I would keep going the way you are and add nitrogen to your used litter. There are lots of other methods. i recently saw someone who used rice hulls mixed in with zeolite. The zeolite absorbs the nitrogen and the rice hulls decompose slowly. She has a raised wooden floor run like yours and doesn't need to change the litter very often. She is on here I think. I can PM you with her username if you want more details.
It is absorbing the poop and keeping the smell down. The pine shavings dry out the poop so it doesn't end up rotting. If you use that method then you need to compost the litter in a conventional, moist, fashion before using it on your garden. I use two methods. I use dry litter (shredded paper - I have tons of confidential material to get rid of. Good thing the chooks can't read) in the hen house and change it often. There is not enough depth there for deep litter. I compost that stuff before use. I use deep litter in my run with loads of garden waste, regularly topped up and rained on so it decomposes on site. The bottom layers are ready for the garden when I clean it out.
Ok, so is the DLM not something that I should be doing? Before I was changing out the coop every month and putting new litter in. The problems with that was
that the used litter was starting to stack up and I was really wearing my self out. I heard about this method and was very excited to start this so that I can
enjoy my chickens a little bit more. Now I am hearing that this method is not really working in my coop because I have an elevated coop with a solid wood floor.
what is best to do then?
The beauty of DLM as producing compost is that you use a high carbon litter and the chickens add the nitrogen so by the time it is mature you have a great carbon/nitrogen mix so it decomposes very quickly to lovely rich brown garden food. If you change your litter too often you aren't adding enough poop to the carbon so this stuff will break down very slowly and you'll have piles of it laying around. If you want to keep changing it that often you can add something high nitrogen to it, like lawn clippings, and it will break down and be ready for the garden sooner. You need to keep it moist while it is decomposing too. I am a big fan of composting and I have a big garden so i am biased but I would keep going the way you are and add nitrogen to your used litter. There are lots of other methods. i recently saw someone who used rice hulls mixed in with zeolite. The zeolite absorbs the nitrogen and the rice hulls decompose slowly. She has a raised wooden floor run like yours and doesn't need to change the litter very often. She is on here I think. I can PM you with her username if you want more details.
