deep litter & throwing scratch in it to get the chickens to mix it..

[Beekissed]

I'm not a commercial chicken farmer, but I've worked with them all my life.

This could be your problem...commercial chicken farmers aren't farmers. They keep chickens in a big tin box and no stretch of the imagination could call that farming. Of course they breed disease~ and they are still using deep litter in the chicken boxes in my area. TOO many chickens in a contained area is the problem, not the deep litter. Of course you are seeing disease...that is all the commercial chicken people do well, raise diseased and dying chickens. Their deep litter is full of the dead ones, diseased chickens spread disease, not their bedding.

If they have discarded this method that is all the reason I need to continue using it....

Commercial chicken farmers.....

 

[saladin]

You may not agree with how commercial poultrymen raise their chickens that's fine. I didn't say I did either. But if you think for one moment they are losing tons of birds to disease then you better think again. Their job is to turn a profit and you can't do that with sick and dying birds.

We are obviously don't going to agree on this issue of deep litter. Who said we had too?
I gave my opinion and experience as did others that was different from mine.
You can choose how to raise your birds as I have mine for the past few decades.

 

[saladin]

Quote:
Then Beekissed quoted:

This is probably the reason why commercial chicken farmers abandoned the method. It is not commercially viable to have that much floorspace for chickens if you want to make a profit. However, most small flock owners do have that space and therefore it's not a problem for them and has a lot of advantages. There is always more than one viewpoint, depending on where you stand.

You are, of course, absolutely correct; 'there is always more than one viewpoint.' Y'all know mine: the deep-litter method is a crock.

Can you share what you use on your coop floor?

Gale,
I personally like wheat/oat straw. The material on the floor is not the issue.

The deep litter method maintains that it can be used without having to be cleaned out for a long period of time (most go 1 year). Now, if you are rasing a group of birds on the deep litter like Mac in Wis. does and kills them all at the end of the year and then cleans the barn before a new group comes in that is perfectly fine. Most of us don't do our birds that way.

I keep the same birds year after year; plus, I add new birds that I've raised to the flock throughout the year (at 20 weeks). Herein is part of the problem. (MY hens have the barn and 1 acre of yard.)

The problem arises when you encounter disease which I did about 7 or 8 years ago. The worst strain of coryza I have ever encountered. I had to medicate/kill more birds than most folks on this site have ever even seen!

When I talked with the poultry specialist at Clemson, she advised that I do away with the deep litter method and start cleaning out and disinfecting the barn every month. I have done that ever since. Slowly but surely I have approached the spot where the disease has been eradicated from my place.

All I have been trying to do is save lots of time, money and loss for those that keep birds as I do (year after year). It seems though that folks get wed to a particular method of housing like it is a religion or something.

Experience has taught me the hard way. Keeping things in the house as clean as possible is very important for the health of the birds.
The deep litter method (when raising birds as I do) is a harbor for the disease you are trying to eradicate. It reminds me of the filth I see in the overcrowed chicken barns that bee hates so. Now, why would I want to raise my birds like that? I did and paid a very high price. No more.

Do you know what it is like to have to kill/treat 30 different sick hens a week: week afer week for months at a time? To walk into the chicken house each morning only to find dead birds? I do.

It wasn't the fault of deep litter, but the deep litter allowed it to continue unabated.

Use it if you like; that is your choice.

Me? I'm cleaning out my barn....every month!

 

[warmfuzzies]

I just always throw another couple of inches of straw on top when it gets yucky. Then in Spring I clean the whole thing out. i clean mine twice a year and it never gets smelly.

ETA- I never stir it either. I figure that the bottom layers are composting so I let it be. But that's just my way.

 

[frostbite]

Saladin, I appreciate reading your story and rationale. That sounds very reasonable. My problem is that cleaning out the chicken coop and disinfecting every month is difficult in the winter months, when it gets too cold to do much work outside with water from October through March. I'll have to have a heated water dispenser for them to keep it liquid for that purpose. It gets down to 20 below or so for weeks at a time, and I had thought that the increasing depth of litter could contribute to insulation, I'm thinking. I'll only have 6-7 birds, and I don't plan on changing the flock much; if I ever do, it will be in the late spring after the snow melt and the weather is conducive, sometime in May.

I will rethink this though. It is tucked away in the nether regions of my cranium to stew for awhile... chicks won't arrive till March, so I've got time.

Thanks everybody for the input.

 

[gale65]

Quote:
Can you share what you use on your coop floor?

Gale,
I personally like wheat/oat straw. The material on the floor is not the issue.

The deep litter method maintains that it can be used without having to be cleaned out for a long period of time (most go 1 year). Now, if you are rasing a group of birds on the deep litter like Mac in Wis. does and kills them all at the end of the year and then cleans the barn before a new group comes in that is perfectly fine. Most of us don't do our birds that way.

I keep the same birds year after year; plus, I add new birds that I've raised to the flock throughout the year (at 20 weeks). Herein is part of the problem. (MY hens have the barn and 1 acre of yard.)

The problem arises when you encounter disease which I did about 7 or 8 years ago. The worst strain of coryza I have ever encountered. I had to medicate/kill more birds than most folks on this site have ever even seen!

When I talked with the poultry specialist at Clemson, she advised that I do away with the deep litter method and start cleaning out and disinfecting the barn every month. I have done that ever since. Slowly but surely I have approached the spot where the disease has been eradicated from my place.

All I have been trying to do is save lots of time, money and loss for those that keep birds as I do (year after year). It seems though that folks get wed to a particular method of housing like it is a religion or something.

Experience has taught me the hard way. Keeping things in the house as clean as possible is very important for the health of the birds.
The deep litter method (when raising birds as I do) is a harbor for the disease you are trying to eradicate. It reminds me of the filth I see in the overcrowed chicken barns that bee hates so. Now, why would I want to raise my birds like that? I did and paid a very high price. No more.

Do you know what it is like to have to kill/treat 30 different sick hens a week: week afer week for months at a time? To walk into the chicken house each morning only to find dead birds? I do.

It wasn't the fault of deep litter, but the deep litter allowed it to continue unabated.

Use it if you like; that is your choice.

Me? I'm cleaning out my barn....every month!

Thanks for the explanation.

I don't plan on waiting a year or even 6 months, but not every month. I think dh said he would clean it out 3 or 4 times a year but maybe more often in the warmer months.

 

[Noobchick]

*cautiously enters thread*

Saladin, NOT doing the deep litter method makes sense given the high numbers of birds you're raising. I only have 8 birds though, in a 88 sq feet coop.

I'm wondering what you guys' opinions are on keeping a deep litter method for a small flock. (2-10 birds.)

I started out wanting a deep litter method, but am unsure if I can still do it. A contractor ruined the bedding that I had had down from July-beginning of September. I had to replace all the bedding because he had gotten it all sopping wet.

At this point, is it still workable?

To the original poster: thank you for your question about the deep litter method and the DE. I'm interested to know about DE too.

 

[saladin]

frostbite: 20 below??????????

Around my neck of the woods when it goes to 60F we start pulling out the coats and thinking about summer! Ah, the joys of the glorious 100s!

 

[kingdr85]

Saladin - What method do you use? or what method do you recommend for a small flock of 4-8 hens in a good size coop?

 

[frostbite]

Saladin: I don't know how you tolerate the heat, but I used to live in southern California, so I understand the cold angst. Interestingly, we have birds that live here year round, ravens, owls, chickadees, finches, woodpeckers, and one flock of ducks that lives on the open stretch of water in the Chena River just downstream from the power plant, which means there's also a resident pair of bald eagles that hang around because of the availability of fresh meat.

The ravens are incredibly tough, out during the daylight hours checking out the roadsides for frozen food, checking out the dumpsters behind all the restaurants, following sickly looking moose and caribou till wolves take them down and give them leftovers. Whether it's 20 or 60 below, they're still out there, with their feathers fluffed out so much they look like black fluffy basketballs with beaks sticking out one end and a tail sticking out the other. Same with the smaller birds. They're cute when it's cold outside!

That's why we don't start chicks in the fall; the local feed store only stocks chicks in the spring. It's quite an event down there when the chicks are in. They carry a variety of cold hardy egg laying and dual purpose birds, also meat birds, ducks, geese, pheasants and guinea fowl. But we want them to be well feathered and all grown up by the time the colder weather comes.

The presence of other birds that do well in the harsh winters gives me confidence that a cold but dry and sheltered coop will be adequate for them, that they will adapt to the cold, and look very fluffy. But it's my first time raising chickens, so it will be interesting to see how winters go. There are quite a few other folks around who keep small flocks (or the local feed store wouldn't do such good business)

I'm designing my roosts to be removable and changeable, they will be two by fours that sit in their supports vertically in the summer, so the birds sit on a two inch perch, and horizontally in the winter, so they can sit flat on the four inch side so their toes don't hang down, and their fluffiness can cover them up and protect them from the cold!