Deep litter question!

[3KillerBs]

Thank you for letting me know all of that! I'll try to figure out a way to use more of the shed to make a bigger coop the ventilation diagram is also really helpful.

You're welcome. We all learn from those that came before and then we pass it one.

The goal of the ventilation is for it to be the same temperature and humidity inside the coop and outside the coop.

 

[luckycluk]

I don't know what you have been reading, or where you have been reading it, but I deep litter here in FL. No, deep litter doesn't get too hot. It's a cold compost method.

Im a newbie with a lot of stuff so I’m not trying to question you just too understand. Isn’t the deep litter method used in old months to generate heat? I live in NC and it gets cold here in winter. I start letting my bedding start to build up beginning of September n add to it so by the time it turns cold it can keep the coop warm for them. Im asking cuz if thats wrong I need to do something else. Any info. Is appreciated

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Im a newbie with a lot of stuff so I’m not trying to question you just too understand. Isn’t the deep litter method used in old months to generate heat? I live in NC and it gets cold here in winter. I start letting my bedding start to build up beginning of September n add to it so by the time it turns cold it can keep the coop warm for them. Im asking cuz if thats wrong I need to do something else. Any info. Is appreciated

Birds have down coats they can't take off - they do extremely well in cold weather with no assistance by us whatsoever. in NC, you need do NOTHING to keep your birds warm, apart from providing a dry, well ventilated, draft free environment.

I'm not sure where the idea comes from that they need a warm, decomposing floor?
and no need to apologize - its a good question, and there is lots of popular "wisdom" out there that seems to have strayed far from the reality as fewer and fewer people actually raised backyard chickens. Something of a rediscovery going on now of what has value, what does not, and what is simply no longer relevant.

 

[NatJ]

Im a newbie with a lot of stuff so I’m not trying to question you just too understand. Isn’t the deep litter method used in old months to generate heat? I live in NC and it gets cold here in winter. I start letting my bedding start to build up beginning of September n add to it so by the time it turns cold it can keep the coop warm for them. Im asking cuz if thats wrong I need to do something else. Any info. Is appreciated

When you let the litter or bedding build up nice and deep, sometimes it generates heat and sometimes it does not. The difference is usually in how wet or dry it is.

If it is dry, it stays the same temperature it always was, and it acts as insulation so the chickens are not walking on a cold floor.

If it is moist or slightly wet, it starts to decompose, and that makes heat, just like a compost pile does. (Of course being too wet makes a stinky muddy mess.)

Some people call one version "deep bedding" and the other "deep litter," but I can never keep straight which term is supposed to mean which thing. So I think of them as having moisture (decomposes, makes heat) or dry (no decomposing, no extra heat.)

 

[3KillerBs]

Im a newbie with a lot of stuff so I’m not trying to question you just too understand. Isn’t the deep litter method used in old months to generate heat? I live in NC and it gets cold here in winter. I start letting my bedding start to build up beginning of September n add to it so by the time it turns cold it can keep the coop warm for them. Im asking cuz if thats wrong I need to do something else. Any info. Is appreciated

Unless you're up in the mountains there's no need to even think about keeping chickens warm in the winter (and really not even there -- when I lived in Boone it never got below 0F and chickens are fine at 0F with their built-in down parkas.

Here are my chickens in the snow in their open air coop: https://www.backyardchickens.com/posts/25324962
https://www.backyardchickens.com/posts/25324805

 

[luckycluk]

Birds have down coats they can't take off - they do extremely well in cold weather with no assistance by us whatsoever. in NC, you need do NOTHING to keep your birds warm, apart from providing a dry, well ventilated, draft free environment.

I'm not sure where the idea comes from that they need a warm, decomposing floor?
and no need to apologize - its a good question, and there is lots of popular "wisdom" out there that seems to have strayed far from the reality as fewer and fewer people actually raised backyard chickens. Something of a rediscovery going on now of what has value, what does not, and what is simply no longer relevant.

Thank you so much, mine has did fine. The first year I had chickens I argued with my husband( he is an ole country boy) he tried telling me they would be fine. I insisted that I needed a red heat lamp in the top of the coop. We did it first year but second yeR I just let them get used w the weather changing slowly and they have adapted. I have been just adding fresh pine shavings over what it in station g in September until march but seems I don’t need the deep litter. Thanks for the info

 

[kimfry71]

Hi, I'm new here. I've heard lots of stuff about the deep litter method - but I just don't agree that it's healthy. I've had chickens for over a year, although I grew up on a farm raising other types of animals and I firmly believe in a clean house for them. The idea of allowing poop to collect for months is just gross. I clean my chicken house once per week, minimum. I have a 4' x 8' shed-type coop that I built, with roost bars so they're not sitting in their own poop, wood shavings on the floor for bedding and absorbtion, and I clean it out every week and put the soiled shavings in my garden, which loves it. To me, not cleaning the coop is like humans not flushing their toilets. Sorry, but germs and bugs are going to grow. That's just me, but I just don't think it's good for them. If you're going to raise animals, clean up after them Allowing it to sit for months while you add more bedding on top of it... yuck, sorry. No offense to anybody using this method and succeeding with it, I would just never do it.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Unless you're up in the mountains there's no need to even think about keeping chickens warm in the winter (and really not even there -- when I lived in Boone it never got below 0F and chickens are fine at 0F with their built-in down parkas.

Here are my chickens in the snow in their open air coop: https://www.backyardchickens.com/posts/25324962
https://www.backyardchickens.com/posts/25324805

I'm just upvoting Pisgah National Forest. Backpacked some significant number of miles there, in my youth. Beautiful county.

Also, there is a good way, and a bad way, to backpack up Pilot's mountain. One side is MUCH steeper than the other. Trust me when I say that none of us are that young anymore.

 

[3KillerBs]

he idea of allowing poop to collect for months is just gross.

To me, not cleaning the coop is like humans not flushing their toilets. Sorry, but germs and bugs are going to grow.

I can understand your mental picture of the filthiness, but a proper DRY Deep Bedding system is odorless and germ free because the abundance of dry bedding dries the poop out completely. Bacteria can't grow in the dried poop and flies are not attracted to it either.

Any non-parasitic bugs that enter the coop are known as "chicken snacks" -- they're supposed to eat bugs. That's their nature.

Neither does a moist composting environment grow pathogenic bacteria. The composting organisms digest the poop harmlessly -- no odor and no danger of illness.

The only time a chicken coop with Deep Bedding can in any way be compared to an unflushed toilet is when there are too many chickens for the amount of space and bedding and the coop is so poorly ventilated that moisture builds up -- overwhelming the ability of the bedding to perform it's function of drying out the poop.

Likewise for a coop or run using Deep Litter -- with the addition of the possibility of poor ground drainage allowing water to accumulate so that the bedding is soggy rather than moist.

That's not the fault of the Deep Bedding or the Deep Litter but of the over-crowding, poor ventilation, and/or bad groundwater drainage.

 

[cp2894_]

That is way too small for 5 full grown birds.
Can you use more of the shed to build an adequate coop?
Is the shed itself well ventilated?

Hi! So sorry to bother you again. I went out to measure again and realized I wrote the measurement of the width down wrong. It's actually 3'8 not 2'8. If I found a way to make the coop taller, do you think that would still be too small? The length and width together would be a little less than 24 ft². I'd also be adding much more ventilation.