@Tillicans, are you referring to the hen house (interior space where birds roost and nest) or the run/pen (exterior space where birds have access to the ground)?
You can do DL in both places, but some people, myself included, opt to maintain DL only in the exterior space and maintain a dry, deep layer of bedding in the interior space.
My coop is just a little too small for my number of birds I have, so if I tried to maintain a composting litter inside their poop would quickly throw off the balance of the nitrogen to carbon. My solution is to catch most of the poop on poop trays and remove it. The bedding in the coop stays very dry. I fluff the bedding daily. In the spring I remove the bedding, putting half in the run (so as not to overload it with too much carbon) and the other half straight into the compost pile.
Outside is a different story. I maintain a true DL in the run. I do so primarily as a water abatement measure because my run is located on low-lying land and prone to getting soggy when it rains or there is snowmelt in the spring. It has a thin base of sand (the remnants of a failed attempt to use sand to manage my drainage issues). On top of that is 6-8 inches of wood chips and another 6 inches of organic yard and leaf waste on top of that. In the spring it gets the old bedding on it which helps with any extra spring rain wetness and gives a boost of carbon in preparation for all the nitrogen that I know will be coming in the form of lawn clippings later. I never turn the litter in the run. The birds do that work for me. I occassionally rake it level.
As far as the sand goes, in my case I didn't mind leaving the old layer of sand under my DL. I didn't bother removing all of it because most of it had worked its way into the soil anyway. My soil is really mostly clay, so having the sand there actually worked to break up the clay which did help a little with drainage in my already soggy location. I probably wouldn't apply sand as a base for new DL if the ground already drained really well, but if if it was a wet area to begin with and there was already some sand down I really wouldn't worry too much about removing it.
You can do DL in both places, but some people, myself included, opt to maintain DL only in the exterior space and maintain a dry, deep layer of bedding in the interior space.
My coop is just a little too small for my number of birds I have, so if I tried to maintain a composting litter inside their poop would quickly throw off the balance of the nitrogen to carbon. My solution is to catch most of the poop on poop trays and remove it. The bedding in the coop stays very dry. I fluff the bedding daily. In the spring I remove the bedding, putting half in the run (so as not to overload it with too much carbon) and the other half straight into the compost pile.
Outside is a different story. I maintain a true DL in the run. I do so primarily as a water abatement measure because my run is located on low-lying land and prone to getting soggy when it rains or there is snowmelt in the spring. It has a thin base of sand (the remnants of a failed attempt to use sand to manage my drainage issues). On top of that is 6-8 inches of wood chips and another 6 inches of organic yard and leaf waste on top of that. In the spring it gets the old bedding on it which helps with any extra spring rain wetness and gives a boost of carbon in preparation for all the nitrogen that I know will be coming in the form of lawn clippings later. I never turn the litter in the run. The birds do that work for me. I occassionally rake it level.
As far as the sand goes, in my case I didn't mind leaving the old layer of sand under my DL. I didn't bother removing all of it because most of it had worked its way into the soil anyway. My soil is really mostly clay, so having the sand there actually worked to break up the clay which did help a little with drainage in my already soggy location. I probably wouldn't apply sand as a base for new DL if the ground already drained really well, but if if it was a wet area to begin with and there was already some sand down I really wouldn't worry too much about removing it.
