Got sand? You should!

[chellejeff]

Thanks for the info on the moderator. For clarification, my post #26, was not me quoting a bunch of people. I responded to numerous comments and inquiries. One user mistook it that I was quoting them. We have since sorted it all out and as far as I know we're once again one big chicken loving family.

 

[kuntrygirl]

Quote:
WOW! WOW!! AND WOW!!!! I love it! Is that your chicken house?

I love how the chickens are looking down at your dog as to say, "Curfew is over. Time to go Scruffy".

I see a little bit of your nesting boxes and I like those as well. Looks like you've got things together over there.

 

[chellejeff]

Fortunately, since my operation is very small, I can afford to indulge a little. My kids (both in college) insisted that I build something that you might find in a mythical forest. My daughter wanted a round door, but I wasn't up to that. I wanted something I could stand up in. Right away we started acclimating the dog to the hens so there wouldn't be a conflict. She spends a lot of time with the hens. These photos are a few months old. The inside is now insulated and paneled, and there is a wide poop tray under the perch. Here is a photo of my kids, home on Christmas break, playing with a couple of the younger hens in our house.

 

[Chicklette 1]

What do you use in the nesting boxes? Sand also?

 

[chellejeff]

I was using the wood shavings. I'm putting sand in the boxes right now to see if they like it. They have continued laying in the boxes. I suppose I could put sand in some and wood shavings in others and then see where they put the eggs. That would be interesting.

 

[Chicklette 1]

The way my girls throw the shavings around with their feet, I think I would soon have a nice mixture of sand and shavings.

 

[Moabite]

I've had great luck with the sand in my run and it has blended well with the river sand/clay mix that it already here from the Colorado River. The hens unearth strange rocks all the time even petrified dinosaur bone fragments and few Jurassic gastroliths.
(Previous homeowner's were rockhounds and when the Feds added vertebra fossils to Antiquities Act, must have got nervous and buried stuff around the yard.)

I have been using Dug Fir savings from my neighbors wood shop and I don't have any problems using them either. I like having the 3 1/2" of fluffy insulation pine in coop. I used to fuss over keeping it very tidy but I found I can go a few weeks and the coop reaches a homeostasis. Yeah, there are some droppings visible in there, but it is dry and not too dusty. No ammonia smell to speak of. Also, I have a reach-in coop, so no problem stepping in poo.

In April, I'll shovel most of the sand and all of the shavings into garden and rake all the biomass (leaves, coffee grounds, egg shells, kitchen scraps that chickens don't eat) covering the garden into a large mountain, water it, and let it heat up. As it cooks down into black gold, I'll let the hens help me spread it back out before I plant on Mother's day. I can hardly wait!

 

[wolfandfinch]

Beautiful coop! WOW!

 

[cabincrazyone]

I like it! Very creative door frame.

 

[HennyPenny2]

Quote:
I use sand but wheat straw to line the nest boxes. any straw that gets kicked out is east to pick up.