Deep litter method

[Beekissed]

Soil floor. Same thing as the garden, without the wind and rain degradation of the topsoil. Here's a pic of my coop and you can clearly see the sides are no more than 4 in. deep and that coop has absorbed about 6 bales of pine shavings, one of cedar, and 4 trash cans of compressed leaves, with countless piles of leaves raked directly into the coop itself, as well as hay, weeds, yard debris...since last year around Sept. In addition, this year alone I've already raked 3 huge piles of leaves into the coop again and they will soon disappear as well. I've got 4 large trash cans of compressed leaves to use this winter as well and am raking leaves to store right next to the coop also, as the four cans of leaves I used last year didn't last me all winter. The leaves are the quickest to just break down and disappear. I'll be raking about 3 more huge piles into this coop again next week to try and pack all the leaves I possibly can in the coop before the snows fall.



Below is just one set of weeds that has been deposited here...any that I trim off gets placed here and incorporated into the bedding...there to disappear.


The grass around this coop has greened up where the nutrients leach out of the coop when it rains but there are no direct washings of water through the coop as no water runs into it, even in a hard rain.


If you just scrape back the top of the litter you can see the moisture below it and below that is loose, dark soil.



It would have to be seen to be believed, but it's happening so well that I never have to do anything to this coop but just keep adding materials. In my coop with a wooden floor I didn't have this level of break down but I should have used some soil to culture it first and also should have stopped working it up and airing out the bottom layers..should have just let it sit and stew like I do now and it, too, would have degraded more quickly.

 

[RoseMarie1]

When's the last time you put compost or mulch on a garden? Within one season it just disappears. All those nutrients are just incorporated into the soil structure, taken even deeper by the worms and bugs and all that is left is just granules. Just loamier soil, but it doesn't build up...if that were the case every garden I know would be 4 ft. tall by now. It just incorporates into the soils below like it never was.

That's where the soil culture comes into play, all the various organisms and microorganisms just doing what they do and the more you have, the healthier they are, the quicker the process of turning compost into soil, soil into substrata.

the worms and critters in the soil eat it and it just breaks down into the soil to where you don't see it. Tell you another thing, we did a lasagna garden a few years ago on top of the grass in an area in our yard. We didn't till the soil or anything and it all broke down by the next year. I put cardboard boxes in there, then some soil, then some paper, then soil, and just kept layering it like that. By the next summer all of that was gone. Not one piece of it could be found. I even bought a thing of worms and threw in the garden.

 

[niqueie]

I can't say for our coop, as we are new to chickens, but I have been composting for many years. It does break down to what seems like nothing; Just really rich earth. We moved to a home that had been somewhat neglected. They had a compost pile in the corner of a fence. We were doing so much to the house when we moved that the yard/garden were completely neglected again. Every time we clipped or cut grass or trees or such, it went onto the compost pile but we never used it or took it out of the compost pile. It had 2 years of clippings ( which was a ton as there was some major tree pruning and lots of mowing year round here). It does just whittle away slowly. We have started using it finally and it is awesome now. So I can definitely see it not building up in the coop too.

But it would have to be somewhat moist ground unlike our ground. We get very little rain here and during the summer it can go more than 120 consecutive days without rain. We do have a rainy winter season where it looks like Ireland for 2 months before the dry season hits.

Also it doesn't seem like Bee's ground cover is high on the wood shaving. Those take a very long time to compost down. I wish my coop could have those awesome pine boughs. It looks very festive for Christmas.

 

[Mtn Laurel]

I'm constantly amazed at how stuff breaks down with deep litter, even without a soil floor. My floor is wood [covered with a tarp to protect it] and the coop is new. The girls moved in the end of April.

The day the girls were to move in, I was filling the nesting boxes with straw. My plan was to then put down pine shavings on the floor and use the straw in the garden. Well, the string on the bale of straw busted and it exploded into the coop. An entire bale in an 8 x 10 coop makes for a lot of straw and - while I wasn't happy about it - I wasn't about to rake it out. So, the coop began with a huge amount of straw in the floor. There were no leaves to add and I didn't want to add pine shavings at that point as the straw was already over my ankles. I just let it be and let the girls do their thing.

Now - a bit over 6 months later - there is no evidence that there was ever any straw in that coop. Of course, I've added pine shavings since then and leaves now that they're available. I added the dirt the beginning of October [probably should have added it sooner]. My point is that even with just straw and chicken poo plus the girls scratching and digging about in there, that huge amount of straw is all gone. There is a fine layer of very small bits of what probably was straw on the bottom but it's in tiny pieces, is darker, and feels very soft and almost loamy.

If it can disappear in my coop I've no doubt that most anything you put in a coop with a dirt floor would be gone before you know it.

 

[Arielle]

Below is just one set of weeds that has been deposited here...any that I trim off gets placed here and incorporated into the bedding...there to disappear.


The grass around this coop has greened up where the nutrients leach out of the coop when it rains but there are no direct washings of water through the coop as no water runs into it, even in a hard rain.


If you just scrape back the top of the litter you can see the moisture below it and below that is loose, dark soil.

Bee, clearly this coop has not been moved for a very long time. How or why did you decide to make this a stationary coop rather than a mobile one given the acres of land to move it around on??

 

[Beekissed]

Also it doesn't seem like Bee's ground cover is high on the wood shaving. Those take a very long time to compost down. I wish my coop could have those awesome pine boughs. It looks very festive for Christmas.

Those aren't pine boughs...those are clippings from our flower bed! Most of those are clippings from our yellow tickseed and also some of our chocolate mint herbs. Still smells like chocolate chip ice cream in that coop!

A good way to retain moisture in your deep litter is to place your grass clippings, hay, weed trimmings and such in the bedding to add some moisture and retain moisture in arid climates.

Bee, clearly this coop has not been moved for a very long time. How or why did you decide to make this a stationary coop rather than a mobile one given the acres of land to move it around on??

I decided to make it stationary after I moved it a couple of times....TOO heavy!

It's been in that place for a little over a year now. Needed wheels or skids to make it more mobile as I had added so much to the original design of a hoop house that I made it a tad too heavy.

Then I decided I loved the benefit of deep litter more than I liked moving it around and trying to keep it level~we have some hilly land~so I kept it in one place and started building deep litter. If the birds didn't have any free range and they had to stay in that coop, I'd move it weekly and would find a way to do so...but it's just too convenient to leave it in one place. A person could leave it in one place for a whole year, move it over one coop space and plant some awesome veggies there, I'm thinking.

 

[Arielle]

That's what I was thinking-- it looks too heavy to move easily!! lol

ANd when you plant that lovely space with veggies-- how many will you harvest vs. the chooks????lol

 

[TheSpiceGirls]

Alright, I'm convinced and I'm going to give DLM a try. In the big coop on the left. The roosts are along the back of the coop so it shouldn't impact the pop door at all.

I've got about three inches of pine shavings on the floor right now. There is also a sprinkling of Sweet PDZ. Is that bad? Do I need to start over? Or will that be okay and just don't add anymore?

I'm also surrounded by Chinese Pastiche trees that are now dropping these tiny leaves. I just put two big buckets full in their run for them to kick around. I've done that for three years now and now have a nice organic base against mud. Only half of their run gets wet and we do get lots of worms so I like them to have some areas to play in the dirt.

I'm nervous about going DLM. It just seems so unsanitary but then I look at how many people have been doing that for many, many years which tells me that it can't be all bad.

 

[armorfirelady]

It may seem unsanitary but it really is not. I have been using DL for over a year now in several coops. My level is the hoop coop is not deep because I had to move it because of flooding. But when I moved it back I did put all the DL back in it. So it has a nice base. I havent addded any more leaves to it in over a month and the leaves are breaking down nicely. When it starts to get low I will add more. You cant even see where the poop is except under the roost of course. I tend to rake it in a pile in the middle on rainy days and the girls love to dig & scrath thru it and redistrubute it around the coop.

But I can put my hands in the DL and scoop up a handful and not be worried about poop on my hands. It really breaks down quite fast. And its so nice to be able to throw plant matter in there and know its going to good use and nothing is better than free litter

 

[Beekissed]

Chickens aren't sanitary and there is no way to make them so...so if you can't beat them, you join them!

Turn their poop into something better and the coop into a sort of a self cleaning oven. I would never do this if it made my coop stink or compromised the health of my birds..that's two of my big sticking points in poultry keeping. No stink, no build up of harmful pathogens.