Hi All, When we started the chicken yard my boy took the tractor to the ground to smooth it out were I would not fall over uneven ground, rocks or what not. But after the winter, spring and summer rains I have a lot of mud and with no top soil or grass and 200 chicks growing up and are now 5 & 6 months old these and doing their daily duty before leaving the pens to free range and things are looking kinda of yackee. what can I put on the ground to sweet it from all the chicken poo. Wife to my retired Captain, who indulges me and my whims. mom to 4 boys, foster mom to 12. grandma to 8, great grandma to 2 and chicken enjoyer of 200, and a dialysis patiant to boot.5 drop off cats and 2 drop off dogs. thank you for the help Pat from Yelm Washington
Hi Pat, I live north of you and also get mud in my chicken run. I haven't tried sand, but have had ok luck with both wood shavings and straw. I like the straw for summer when it is not so wet. Has anyone else reading this in the rainy Pacific NW tried sand?
I really couldn't afford enough sand to do the job right, so I'm basically doing the deep litter method with pine shavings in the run. Every once in a while I'll walk out there and get some poop out, and rake it around, and then add more shavings. At some point, maybe every few months or so, I'll shovel it into my compost pile and replace with new shavings. The straw gets stinky when it's wet, and I don't think it really works well with poop. The pine shavings do a great job of drying the poop out, and since the poop is only smelly when wet, there is very little problem.
Dont know how big your run is but sand here in texas is only like 15-20 for a full ton from a local gravel yard. We have sand and pea gravel to help with drainage. You can also get a bag of Sweet PDZ from your local feed store, it is basically a stall drying agent used in horse stalls but works great for me and several others here. You can also try some DE, it also dries things out. http://www.sweetpdz.com/
