I decided to try the deep litter method, and now, a year later, I can tell you that it works GREAT in Alaska, but not the way I thought...
Start out in April with a clean coop, put your spruce shavings in there with your chicks, and let 'er rip!
Add more shavings as needed, throw in some scratch and some darkling beetles to get them mixing it up, and you can make it a few more months.
Long about October, the whole works pretty much freezes. Frozen poop doesn't smell at all, and it grows like stalagmites under the roosts. You can grab the stalagmites with your gloved hands and lift them out of the coop like great chunks of firewood, and throw them in your compost bin with the rest of the frozen stuff in there, every once in a while, when the stalagmites get too tall and start to impede movement around the coop.
You can get along this way for about seven months. Stays nicely frozen and smell free. Add a little more shavings every now and then for the insulation value.
Then around mid April, when the place starts warming up to 30 degrees with fair frequency, you start to notice the whole thing is starting to melt, and therefore starts casting off the odor you've been missing all those long months. Now is the time to kick the chickens out of the coop, scrape the darn thing clean, fill the rest of your compost bin, or spread it on the lawn so it will start to attract flies. Gives the chickens something to do when they're free ranging. The yard only smells bad the first couple days....
Right now, we're back to the "growing stagmites" stage....
