Deep litter method

[Mims]

I agree!! If you have a local town, there are many, many bags of free leaves already raked up and bagged for you. I collected nearly 300 large bags of leaves this year in just a 3-4 day period...easy work. It was more work just opening all those bags and spreading the leaves. Some were stored for coop bedding, most were used on the orchard and garden.

Very few of these bags had foreign objects in them...mostly plastic water bottles, potted plant markers, odds and ends of plastic. These were easily found and removed when emptying the bags.

I'll be doing the same thing next fall if I'm still here and have given eggs and compost to one couple, in particular, who have said they will save their leaves for me...they pick up 90 bags per fall off their pin oaks! They also chop the leaves before bagging, so they have the perfect leaf collection. I also have taken eggs to another older couple with oak and maple trees and they too bag up around 100 bags per year and said I could have them again in the fall. I'll keep giving these people eggs and garden produce this season so they will remember the dividends of their leaves come fall.

I also scout for free wood chips~not wood shavings or sawdust~but ramial wood chips wherein the tree's smaller limbs and leaves have been shredded along with their branches so that the green material has been piled with the brown and all the particles are of different size and shape. This makes for the best long term compost of all, as all of those particles compost at different rates and it creates a great heat.

Recently I found a source of free loose straw that had been sitting in a pile for a long while...underneath is black as coal, the top part loose straw, so the combination makes for some great composting choices.

Just put the word out early and often, keep your eyes open and you may find yourself the recipient of some great free materials for coop and run bedding. Corn shucks make for great air spaces....many people would love to have them cleaned out of their gardens at the end of the season. Weeds, flower trimmings, grass clippings, etc.

The imperative word here is FREE.

I have a question about this. When gathering from people's yards, should I be worried about pesticides? I was thinking of contacting the people around town who clean up people's yards, and seeing if I could have the lawn clippings, hedge trimmings, etc. My only worry is that I don't know what I'm bringing in. I live in a desert region, so there's very few wild areas I can collect leaves, pine needles, etc. It would mostly have to come from people's yards. The only thing growing wild around here is tumbleweeds.

 

[RonP]

I have a question about this. When gathering from people's yards, should I be worried about pesticides? I was thinking of contacting the people around town who clean up people's yards, and seeing if I could have the lawn clippings, hedge trimmings, etc. My only worry is that I don't know what I'm bringing in. I live in a desert region, so there's very few wild areas I can collect leaves, pine needles, etc. It would mostly have to come from people's yards. The only thing growing wild around here is tumbleweeds.

Yes, especially when collecting fresh cut grass.

Your birds are what they eat...

 

[Beekissed]

I have a question about this. When gathering from people's yards, should I be worried about pesticides? I was thinking of contacting the people around town who clean up people's yards, and seeing if I could have the lawn clippings, hedge trimmings, etc. My only worry is that I don't know what I'm bringing in. I live in a desert region, so there's very few wild areas I can collect leaves, pine needles, etc. It would mostly have to come from people's yards. The only thing growing wild around here is tumbleweeds.

Never hurts to ask and develop relationships with some people so that you can feel better about collecting their yard leavings. Tell them why you are needing it and even give them eggs in return for their saving you there stuff. They will tell you if there is anything unsafe in there...at least, the folks I collected leaves from did and would point out which bags were safe and which were not, in regards to foreign objects in them.

I don't worry about pesticides with the leaves, as not too many people are spraying 50 ft. pin oaks with pesticides and they have only a brief contact with the grass/lawns before being collected.

 

[eagrbeavr]

Grass definitely but leaves I wouldnt be concerned about chemicals.Ask if its a worry to you tho. Its your bedding.

 

[Kusanar]

I just finished reading this whole thread... seems that I accidentally did deep litter in a stall at my barn, we have a herd of 2 horses on that side of the barn, so we leave a stall open for them to use as a run in shed... well, they don't have enough grass to graze, so they get hay all year, in the summer they spend a lot of time in the stall to stay out of the sun and leave manure, then I was lazy last summer and put their hay in there too, so whatever hay and weeds they didn't eat were packed down into the manure on the dirt floor... now, I need to clean it out, it's a little over a foot deep, but if you dig in it, all you smell is dirt, not manure, no mold, nothing but freshly dug dirt... It's not dark like most of these pics, it was a little on the dry side, but I put some in my compost pile and watered it down and within a day it was black and heating up the compost pile nicely.... I think I'll leave some of the stuff that's in there for bedding when I clean, maybe it'll help break everything down and keep the flies away...

 

[MagicChicken]

Quote:
I'm in a desert area too. Most of our trees have thorns. Last year I had my trees pruned and the tree-trimmers left me a large pile of wood chips. Except they weren't really chips. They were more like chunks and small branch pieces. And those chunks had thorns. Big thorns. I put one wheelbarrow of the stuff into one of my coops and instantly regretted it. I was stepping on thorns every time I went in there. The chickens were too. I eventually raked most of those wood chunks out because the thorns were so annoying.

Most of my trees have tiny leaflets. Too small to rake up. Garden debris is seasonal and not much volume. I am jealous of all the folks who have ready supplies of leaves and grass.

 

[Latestarter]

I would think in the summer, if you drive into many subdivisions on trash day you'll find bags of grass clippings by the curb. In the fall, drive through and you'll find bags of leaves. You could also contact any tree service near you and ask if you can have their chipper stuff. Most of them pay to dump it and would be glad for someone to take it away for free. Contact lawn care companies (mowing services) and ask if you could have some of their clippings. Contact your city arborist or public works dept and ask them what they do with the grass clippings and chipper material from their public landscape maintenance. I mean there are options...

 

[triplepurpose]

I would think in the summer, if you drive into many subdivisions on trash day you'll find bags of grass clippings by the curb. In the fall, drive through and you'll find bags of leaves. You could also contact any tree service near you and ask if you can have their chipper stuff. Most of them pay to dump it and would be glad for someone to take it away for free. Contact lawn care companies (mowing services) and ask if you could have some of their clippings. Contact your city arborist or public works dept and ask them what they do with the grass clippings and chipper material from their public landscape maintenance. I mean there are options...

good ideas, but the problem with getting lawn debris from unknown sources and trimmings from public parks and roadways is that much of this stuff is contaminated with variable ammounts of herbicide, pesticide or both. so id prefer stuff from my own property or sources i can vouch for.

for those in desert areas w/out a lot of greenwaste, why not experiment with sand, or with other creative approaches more locally adapted? manure should dry quickly in arid climes so management requirements might differ anyway. or uou can always buy some straw--yes i know this isnt free but its not that much and you wouldnt need much nor have to replace it often in a dry climate. the biggest downside to straw seems to be that some people find it goes moldy easily, but in the desert this is not such an issue--when i lived in NM for a year i could throw a soggy towel on the floor and it would be dry the next day.

just some thoughts...

 

[Beekissed]

I'm in a desert area too. Most of our trees have thorns. Last year I had my trees pruned and the tree-trimmers left me a large pile of wood chips. Except they weren't really chips. They were more like chunks and small branch pieces. And those chunks had thorns. Big thorns. I put one wheelbarrow of the stuff into one of my coops and instantly regretted it. I was stepping on thorns every time I went in there. The chickens were too. I eventually raked most of those wood chunks out because the thorns were so annoying.

Most of my trees have tiny leaflets. Too small to rake up. Garden debris is seasonal and not much volume. I am jealous of all the folks who have ready supplies of leaves and grass.

It's hard for me to imagine it but when folks mention it, but I do see where I take it for granted that everyone has leaves or available straw, hay, wood chips, bark, lawn clippings. I imagine sand would be the best option in a climate or landscape such as that, as was stated in the last post.

I'm guessing every region has its limitations and blessings when it comes to that, so working around it may require some imagination or just keeping it really, really simple. That's why DL works so well for me....I live where it's medium humidity and we have an abundance of trees and green stuff to put in the coop for the composting.

 

[Molpet]

I'm in a desert area too. Most of our trees have thorns. Last year I had my trees pruned and the tree-trimmers left me a large pile of wood chips. Except they weren't really chips. They were more like chunks and small branch pieces. And those chunks had thorns. Big thorns. I put one wheelbarrow of the stuff into one of my coops and instantly regretted it. I was stepping on thorns every time I went in there. The chickens were too. I eventually raked most of those wood chunks out because the thorns were so annoying.

Most of my trees have tiny leaflets. Too small to rake up. Garden debris is seasonal and not much volume. I am jealous of all the folks who have ready supplies of leaves and grass.

there is a thread about sand in the coop https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/250190/anyone-use-sand-in-the-run-coop