Hello From California

Flooring in your run

  • Deep liter

    Votes: 5 71.4%

  • Concrete

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Sand

    Votes: 2 28.6%
  • Total voters
    7
Pics
Date sort Score sort
Kellyk126

Kellyk126

Chirping
5 Years
Oct 2, 2014
14
36
84
Hi all! Just wanted to introduce myself real quick. I’ve had chickens before but not for years. I currently have 13 3 week old chicks and will be keeping 6 once I determine which are Roos. We have Easter eggers, a lavender Orp, Olive eggers, some project laced Orpingtons, a polish cross that’s looking like it will be a tolbunt and a blue maran.

We are building our coop and run and I can’t decide for the life of me which direction to go with the floor so I’ll be reading up a lot in the next few days. We have a prefabbed house I’ve weatherized as much as possible and the run is 8’x16’.

I can’t wait for our eggs!
 
Welcome to Backyard Chickens :frow:welcome
I use a deep litter of wood shavings, straw and hay.
Good luck with your chicks! :jumpy
9F643828-D0C6-4F39-8376-45B5A9A9AA0E.jpeg
 
Welcome :welcome Congrats on your new flock! My coop is a walk in with a wooden floor so I ended up putting a remnant of sheet vinyl down, raised up around edges for easy cleaning. I then put a thick layer of pine shavings down. The attached run is dirt, I added some construction sand in a low spot (the girls since have made it their foul weather dirt bath). I rake my dry fall leaves in the run every fall, the run has a roof and I use plastic sheeting during winter to keep rain/snow and wind out. The chickens love scratching the leaves and by spring it’s broken down.
 
1byc-clouds.png

hithere.gif
My coop is raised with attached covered run and an additional outdoor yard they spend time in every day. Inside the coop I have vinyl flooring with pine shavings. The greatest life-saver is the poop tray under the roosts filled with Sweet PDZ that I just scoop out like cat litter. Since most all the poo lands on the tray at night, the coop floor shavings have remained relatively clean all year!

My covered run has a dirt floor with more pine shavings. But I have my exposed-to-the-weather yard filled with a thick layer of chunky wood chips because that's the only solution I've found to keep away the mud during our very rainy winters. Another important factor is a gutter with a collection dispenser to redirect all the rain runoff to my garden beds. Without the gutter, I would have excessive flooding from the runoff.

I do also have a small area under the coop filled with sand as a dust bath area, but my chickens prefer the dirt floor in the run. I really like using the shavings because I only need to change them out once a year, they all go in my compost bin (along with daily pooper scoops) and it all turns into wonderful garden soil later on... it's a perpetual system. The sand area is a bit more difficult for me to deal with.

Good luck in your new chicken adventure!!
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom