HELP--how to keep urban run clean?

[Buff Hooligans]

If you can afford several inches thickness of sand, do that. Sand drains well, the chickens love to dustbathe in it, and it's very amenable to raking out debris.

 

[clarktx]

ok, on the same topic. I have enough room behind my garage to have one run, and then more room on the side of the garage to build another. I was going to do either/or. This thread has made me wonder if I should actually build both and let the chickens hang out on one side for a week, and then the other.

I will have 3 chickens and each run will have about 40 to 50 square feet, more than they need.

If you have the "perfect" size run, at 10sqft per chicken, then how long does it take them to strip an area of grass? Hours? Days? Weeks?

I'd rather keep my grass, but once they stress it out, it won't grow back that fast...

Now I'm thinking of getting a dog run, that I can move around and have them in a different spot every few days...

 

[chilisweet]

My neighbors are kinda close to us as well. I clean out all the poop from the run and coop every day. I dump that in a pit that I dug next to our fence as far away from the neighbors as possible. Also DE the run and coop every other day. There are alot of flies around right now and we have a trap out there for them. So far so good............

 

[mamarosa]

I too am a new egg and although my run is large it too has been eaten clean by the "girls" Has anyone planted alfalfa or clover on one half and then planted the same on the other to keep the dirt down. Our run is about 24 x 30 not including the coop.