Deep litter method

[kefiren]

i think i use the deep litter (or bedding!?) method. it is really just that i'm lazy. this works best in my chicken barn that sits directly on a stone dust floor. they poop mostly under the roost and i just keep layering on more hay, shavings and leaves into this area. i sprinkle this stuff every day. in spring, this stuff has mostly decayed into mulch. i use it directly as a top dressing in gardens. it is an awful job getting it out--stinky. every time i "wake up" a garden i pull some out until the barn is clean. it makes my gardens grow like crazy. i have a big barn and not too many chickens. i'm by no means commercial. just backyard. the barn is warm and cozy because of the deep litter.

 

[jvls1942]

interesting..
I remove everything once or twice a year.
wash the windows, hose out the whole inside, walls and floor. and start all over again.
I have a few compost piles going at any given time.

I like the "raw" chicken bedding/poop for planting tomatoes.

I dig a hole with a post hole digger, toss in a good shovelful of bedding/poop, cover it with about 2 or 3 inches of dirt and plant the tomato . by the time the roots work their way through the few inches of dirt, the chicken waste is pretty well composted..

........jiminwisc......

 

[KarennFallon]

Thanks Sandy for the reply, I just use an orange and peppermint oil spray instead of the bleach.

Foghorn,
With the deep litter method you start out with just a couple of inches and add to the mix when you need fresh bedding. I normally end up with 8-10+ inches of almost composted bedding by season’s end (which I then add to my compost bins of yard and garden green stuff, to breakdown over the winter). I also toss DE into the shaving mix as i've seen the girls dust bathing in the dry mixture various times during the year. They have dry soil and sandy soil pits in thier run but they will still dust bathe in the dry shaving mixture in the coop???

The new shaving in the bag are really compressed so initially one bag ought to get you started and just have a bag around to add to the mix as your season goes along. Some folks change out their shaving more often, it seems for me that the once a year schedule is working. It is important also that you either mix in the poop and shaving with a rake or use a mix method and rake occasionally and use scratch on the floor to get the hens to do the work. I hang my feeder from the rafters and I also have an auto-watering system out in the run. I have an 8x10 coop with 15 ladies in it currently.

Norm in N. CA

I'm still learning about all this chicken stuff. Why doesn't the DLM method encourage lice and mites, just something to hide and grow in? I understand the use of DE, but I'm told that it discourages pests but doesn't kill them.

 

[mueri07]

I use grass clippings leaves shredded up and than some alfalfa and straw mix. it is amazing! add some fresh grass periodically and also some straw, mix it up almost weekly. They love it!

 

[Dieselsvt]

Sorry if it's been mentioned already in this thread but....

My town dump makes mulch out of the brush dumped there. It's rather course with sticks in it etc...Would this be suitable for outdoor run? I would plan on adding grass clippings and leaves as they accumulate in the yard.

I've been doing deep litter with pine shavings in the coop itself...seems to be working ok.

 

[Kusanar]

Sorry if it's been mentioned already in this thread but....

My town dump makes mulch out of the brush dumped there. It's rather course with sticks in it etc...Would this be suitable for outdoor run? I would plan on adding grass clippings and leaves as they accumulate in the yard.

I've been doing deep litter with pine shavings in the coop itself...seems to be working ok.

Yep, that will work! It will break down slower than softer materials, so depending on your run size and how many hens, you may have to keep adding dry to combat the smell and it may build up too much too fast, but if that happens, just remove some and put it in a compost pile outside of the run to finish breaking down.

 

[mueri07]

I have never used this method in the actual coop, I have it in their run but not the coop. Is this something I should be doing in the coop? they don't spend a lot of time I their besides to sleep right now

 

[AUtiger]

I'm about to pull up all my green beans to plant my winter garden. Can i toss the giant "biomass" of vines and leaves right in? It's a 4ftx8ft raised bed planter overgrowing the 5ft trellis. I have read conflicting things about chickens and bean plants.

 

[kssilkiemama]

Will letting the litter sit for so long wreak havoc on your floor? It seems to me it would rot out after a short time.

I have a concrete block chicken house that is probably 40 years old from the people who owned our farm before. I built some enclosed pens about 4'X6'X6' inside along one wall. We had a ton of used bricks that were piled up that I lined on the dirt floor to help keep the dust down and make clean up of the shavings a little easier. I did not realize there was this much information on the use of deep litter shavings until today.

I just finished cleaning out my pens that have about 6" of shavings in them and I typically clean them out at a minimum of twice a year. The bricks are nice because you can shovel the shavings up pretty easy and no moisture from the ground seeps in. You could also use pavers that are the cheaper ones to line the bottom of your pens from Wal-Mart or the farm store.

 

[Sunnymommy]

Just got chicks outside into their brand new coop/run last night finally! They are 6 1/2 week old white leghorns. I am aiming for deep litter in both coop and run. Right now we have just dirt ground in run and pine shavings on top of dirt on top of vinyl sheets on plywood coop floor. I want to do this properly and get compost not a big stinky mess. So I need to make sure the chickens scratch things up for me regularly right? So far they have only had chick starter feed. What else can I give them at this age to aid the dlm? What else do I need to be sure to do to get going on the right foot?