I have flies around the crumbles that fall but when I was using the fly trap in the run, it was drawing flies in from everywhere. I moved the trap to about 20 feet outside the run and the flies went with it. I do have sand in the run which quickly dries up poop, but I keep it all clean. The flies were really bad when it was 100 degrees and no rain.
I actually just posted asking around on here about sand!
Oh it's never a stupid question. You either love or hate sand and everyone has a reason for their perspective. First, you need to use the right type of sand -coarse sand, not play sand. Play sand is too fine and has silica in it which is harmful to chickens, ducks and humans to breathe (and its what's used in sand boxes
). Coarse sand is known under several names like river sand, construction sand, etc. It has a mixture of larger particles. If you can't find coarse sand, you can use all purpose sand. For reference, my coop is 10'x14', run is 20'x30' with 6 chickens and 6 ducks together. I chose sand for several reasons - I don't have anywhere I want to store or dump bedding, don't plan to compost yet, didn't want to use the deep litter method, I didn't want to attract rodents or snakes, sand doesn't hold or create bacteria, doesn't need to be changed but once a year, and it's cleaner. The chickens roost so they don't care what's on the floor and the ducks like the sand. It's cooler and I have no flies in the coop. I have a long handled scooper (amazon) and I clean the coop EVERY morning. The sand dries out the poop so it's easy to scoop like kitty litter and there's virtually no smell. I have about 3 inches of sand down over the concrete floor. I've read that others use up to 6 inches but I feel that's overkill for my application. I also use DE and first saturday lime or stall pdz which I rake into the sand. Sand can harbor mites but the DE and lime take care of that as does the white washing on the walls inside the coop. I bought 2 tons of sand which I planned for both coop and run but haven't put it in the run yet. I will still have a lot left over to switch it out next year. For reference, it was $30 a ton (sold by the ton) locally and we picked it up. Delivery was $240 which was insane, especially since the company was less than 10 miles away. Do your research as sand may not work well in every situation and some people really don't like it. I love it. It's heavy so if your coop is elevated, you need to ensure the floor can hold it.
Hemp was my 2nd choice, but I can't find any locally. I'd have to order from Amazon, however, some of my reasoning for choosing sand was because hemp wasn't locally available, I'd have to store it and also have to find a place to dump it.
This isn't dangerous to animals?
