Tilhana
Songster
I've only used hay occasionally for short periods when I've been unable to obtain woodchips. I have a big meadow of tall grass in my back yard so if I rake it for a while I come up with a big pile of organic hay, but it's labor intensive. It's also not my preferred bedding as it quickly becomes flat, matted, and dirty and doesn't dry well. I always feel like I need a giant pile of fresh hay because they quickly trample it and it loses most of its volume.
I recently came across this website which gives a lot of great reasons why hay/straw shouldn't be used as chicken bedding (https://the-chicken-chick.com/reasons-straw-does-not-belong-in/). I can't personally confirm all the reasons she gives, but it was enough to make me never want to rake up hay again.
One other potential reason against using hay is that since about 2006 or so, most hay and straw grown in the US is contaminated with aminopyrilids, most commonly Grazon, a VERY persistent herbicide which kills all broadleaf plants. It's not harmful to grasses or livestock (at least as far as we know), so if you're just spreading it on your run and not planning to ever let it near a garden or compost pile, then it might be fine. But if you ever use chicken litter as compost in your garden, I would urge you to stay away from hay or straw unless you're growing it on your property or can guarantee that it was grown organically. Even after being fed to animals, composted, and aged for a year, Grazon-contaminated hay can destroy your garden for several YEARS. It's ridiculously persistent. There's a great article about this widely-used but rarely talked about contaminant here (https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/dont-trust-hay-compost-or-manure-zbcz1704).
For me, it's woodchips all the way. I considered sand but I can't easily get it in quantity, and even if I could, what do I then do with all that soiled sand? Chicken manure is great for gardens, so it seems like a waste to let it all go into sand that I can't really compost. Woodchips, as Joel Salatin says, act as a "carbonaceous diaper". They soak up moisture and, as a bonus, harbor insects for the chickens to scratch in. I use it to cover my garden (which doubles as the chicken run in the winter), and in the coop. In most cases, you can just keep adding layers whenever it gets soiled, and the new dry woodchips will soak up the moisture from the layer below it, and the whole thing will slowly compost from the bottom up. Then periodically you scoop out all the litter and compost it or put it right on your garden.
I live in a heavily wooded area so I'm constantly running into city workers cleaning up fallen branches by the side of the road near my house and chipping them. When my chip pile starts getting low, I just flag down the next one I see and ask them if they can drop their pile at my house. You can also use chipdrop.com to try to connect with arborists in your area to do the same. It works better in some areas than others.
I recently came across this website which gives a lot of great reasons why hay/straw shouldn't be used as chicken bedding (https://the-chicken-chick.com/reasons-straw-does-not-belong-in/). I can't personally confirm all the reasons she gives, but it was enough to make me never want to rake up hay again.
One other potential reason against using hay is that since about 2006 or so, most hay and straw grown in the US is contaminated with aminopyrilids, most commonly Grazon, a VERY persistent herbicide which kills all broadleaf plants. It's not harmful to grasses or livestock (at least as far as we know), so if you're just spreading it on your run and not planning to ever let it near a garden or compost pile, then it might be fine. But if you ever use chicken litter as compost in your garden, I would urge you to stay away from hay or straw unless you're growing it on your property or can guarantee that it was grown organically. Even after being fed to animals, composted, and aged for a year, Grazon-contaminated hay can destroy your garden for several YEARS. It's ridiculously persistent. There's a great article about this widely-used but rarely talked about contaminant here (https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/dont-trust-hay-compost-or-manure-zbcz1704).
For me, it's woodchips all the way. I considered sand but I can't easily get it in quantity, and even if I could, what do I then do with all that soiled sand? Chicken manure is great for gardens, so it seems like a waste to let it all go into sand that I can't really compost. Woodchips, as Joel Salatin says, act as a "carbonaceous diaper". They soak up moisture and, as a bonus, harbor insects for the chickens to scratch in. I use it to cover my garden (which doubles as the chicken run in the winter), and in the coop. In most cases, you can just keep adding layers whenever it gets soiled, and the new dry woodchips will soak up the moisture from the layer below it, and the whole thing will slowly compost from the bottom up. Then periodically you scoop out all the litter and compost it or put it right on your garden.
I live in a heavily wooded area so I'm constantly running into city workers cleaning up fallen branches by the side of the road near my house and chipping them. When my chip pile starts getting low, I just flag down the next one I see and ask them if they can drop their pile at my house. You can also use chipdrop.com to try to connect with arborists in your area to do the same. It works better in some areas than others.