So I'm confused. I keep reading about how important it is to keep your coop and run clean of droppings as they can promote disease.
But if I'm reading some of your posts right, you don't pick up the droppings from your run on a regular basis. You just let it mix and compost and then, what, a few times a year, rake it all out and put it in the garden?
I'm just not sure I could bring myself to do that.
Do you toss seeds, scratch or greens right on top of the droppings? And that's not bad for them?
I guess chickens have been living in confined spaces for hundreds of years w/ out to much issue. But if you could explain further how that works, I'd like to understand better.
Sure. I don't even rake mine out a couple times a year any longer, I just leave it in place but if I had a wooden floor coop I would remove the lower layers once a year so that it wouldn't get too too deep over the years.
Yes, every book out there will tell you that you have to clean up the poop, blah, blah, blah. On barren run soils that have no ground cover left, are packed down and can no longer absorb water, so it makes a slick mess and puddles each time it rains..I'd say removal of the feces each day is a good idea. Too much nitrogen on the soils can kill the balance of organisms to be found there and the bad germs find it a lovely place to thrive.
But, if you can keep a correct balance between the nitrogen of the feces and the carbon of the litter, they will bind with one another to enrich the soils, bugs and worms will inhabit the soil layer under the litter to feed on the manure, keeping the soil loose and loamy which allows the water to absorb instead of run off..this absorption takes the nutrients even lower into the soil and allows the soil layers to cleanse the water of excess nitrogen it may have from the feces.
Meanwhile, because the balance of the soil is more towards normal, beneficial microorganism can colonize the soils there and when they do that, they crowd out the overgrowth of the harmful pathogens. The harmful ones grow faster, but the beneficial ones grow stronger in a balanced soil and they also emit chemicals during their metabolism of the nutrients that actually inhibit the reproduction of the harmful pathogens. So, creating a habitat for beneficial bugs and microorganisms is a long term approach to a healthy flock and a much more effective one than trying to clean up poop and medicating the flock when it gets sick. Start at the beginning, where the problems occur and you may never have a problem. I've never had a problem because my birds free range at all times on soil that is not overstocked and has ground cover to protect the lower layers, but my coop has deep litter to protect the soils in that space from becoming imbalanced.
And that need for soil balance is imperative for this process to occur, no matter where you live, so it doesn't just work regionally...healthy soil is a must for healthy livestock no matter where they live.
One source states high levels of coccidia in the soils can be rectified in just 6 mo. of using deep litter, restoring the soil to a lower level of these organisms so they can expose your birds to lower levels of coccidia in order to form antibodies against it naturally.
