Dirt in Run?

We use medium bark in ours, rake it through every day.
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I have been using mini pine flakes for my poop board, and either mini flakes or reg pine shavings for the floor. Poop board is cleaned with a kitty litter scoop regularly and the floor when it gets about 50/50 poop and shavings it gets raked into the run. The run is dirt bottom with grass clippings, pine shavings, etc. only time it smells is if we have a lot of rain and there isn't enough shavings left. They decompose pretty fast. I won't clean it out until the spring and am hoping to get it a foot deep at least first. I've never had to turn it so far it's been just turning to dirt pretty fast.
 
I use bedding hay fro mine. That way I don't have to step into a poopy muddy mess. Our house is the highest point of the lot, and the best place for the coop was about ten feet from the rear outter wall.

The plus side is that once I have enough mucked out, I'm going to till my garden for the spring and till in the spent hay, that way it can winter over and compost. It really all comes down to what you have the time/ money for. I get my hay from family, so it's relatively cheap for me. In the spring I plan on building a bigger, better coop with a larger run, so for the time being it works for us, hope it works out for ya!!
 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^This!

Depending on the size of the run dump a bag (or bags) of wood chips into the run...and all the brown material you can find such as dried leaves, drives grass clippings, garden debris, etc.,.  If you don't have leaves on your property carry some garbage bags with you and raid the leaf piles in your local town that people put beside the street for disposal.  

It's a "work in progress" so just keep adding brown stuff as you come upon it.  Scatter some BOSS or scratch in the run all along to get the chickens to "fluff" things up all along.  Every now and then you may have to use a fork to fluff it up or remove packed/matted litter.  Using different things add variety for the chickens to pick through and keeps them busy (and out of trouble).  Eventually you will build an ecosystem of bugs, worms, and micro-organisms that will be very healthy for your chickens.  Do not use DE or any pesticides in the litter as it will kill the good bugs that you need to make this work well.

As time goes by a thickness of a foot is a good, but *any* carbon material added will help!  ;)

The grazing panels that henless mentioned work well in providing an added distraction and some nutrition to the run.

Best wishes,
Ed
I thought D/E would not hurt worms
 
I thought D/E would not hurt worms


It's not just worms that are present and needed in an outdoor compost but I would think it would harm worms just like any other bug. DE clings to the exterior or interior if eaten. Worms literally breath through their skin and have to have their skin moist as well.
 
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I thought D/E would not hurt worms
Sure it will. It will hurt you if you inhale it or get it in your eyes. The more tender the tissue/membrane the more injurious I would believe it to be. It is non-specific in which bugs it kills. Worms may be deeper than most bugs and may or may not encounter it while it's dry and fresh. Other good bugs will encounter it in the upper levels. A lot of those are micro-sized critters that do a lot of good feeding and reproducing at the expense of the pest bugs. When a vacuum is created in our environment there will always be something to fill that void...usually something undesirable.

Best wishes,
Ed
 
I have placed sand in mu coop run and have found that yes it does help to keep it clean but the ground gets rock hard after awhile. I have a shovel in my run that I lean up against the fence and I go out and turn over the dirt in the coop almost every day for them. They have gotten so used to me doing this that any time I go out to the coop and run and touch the shovel they run over to wait for me to start turning the dirt over in search for bugs, worms and sprouts from seeds i toss out in the coop every day for them.I have one White crested black polish hen that stands on the other side of the shovel where your foot would go to push it in to the ground. I also rake out the coop bedding and shavings from the floor and turn this into the dirt.
 

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