Help!! New Crazy Chicken Lady!

[Courtneymiller]

Hi everyone! I am new to this group as well as to raising chickens! I have 10, 7 week old chicks who are fully feathered and have almost out grown their brooder. Their coop is complete except for the bedding in the coop and the run. And I have no idea what I want to put in there! I live in Pennsylvania so my winters are cold and we get a lot of rain in the spring. I was initially going to do sand in both places so I could scoop up the poop but I’m worried about warmth in winter and I have also read articles about wet sand being very smelly. My main concern is warmth of course in the winter time and controlling the smell! Currently there is just gravel in the run and the floor in the hen house is just wood. The coop is close to the house and where we spend time outside and I really don’t want to smell it!

 

[DobieLover]

Hello, Courtney, and welcome to BYC! Glad you joined.
You're going to want to enlarge your coop and run. Each bird needs 4 sq ft in the coop and at least 12 in the run. I much prefer 15-20 in the run. So do the birds...
Over crowding will also make it very hard to keep odors down.
I use hemp bedding and/or pine shavings in the coop with poop boards under the roosts. The boards are cleaned daily, the coop annually.
I have a thick layer of wood chips in the run. Everything is on high ground to keep it dry.
Having perches and things to scratch around in and jump up on in the run add critical enrichment.

 

[RubelliteRose]

Hi and welcome. Love the colors of your coop!!!
We currently have wood shavings in our coop which are scooped daily so do not smell at all. I periodically add new shavings, but have only completely emptied the coop once in the past year. We tried the deep bedding method of not scooping, but it didn't work for us. Too much humidity I think, so the coop started to smell not exactly bad, but very dustly if that makes sense.
We have sand in the run. Our run doesn't smell when it's wet, however, it is what I would consider high maintenance. I scoop it at a minimum twice a day, more if I have time. When the sand gets wet, it also compacts and must be broken up every few weeks with a hoe or it starts to become like concrete in the main walking area. We don't get much of a real winter, so I can't say much about how cold the sand gets. It does drain well in the rain though. I think we have a 6" layer of sand in the run.
We have the minimum recommended space now and also free range some, but are expanding the run to about 5x as big and will be using deep litter in the new area while keeping sand in the old. If you can expand, I would highly encourage it! The expansion could be easily added to the side or back of the run. While it would be nice to have the new area covered with a roof, you could just use wire since you already have a nice covered area for them. Our new area will only have a wire covering to keep the predators out.

 

[21hens-incharge]

I strongly recommend removing the gravel in the run for several reasons.

First any poo will be trapped in it and when wet will be smelly as well as a bacteria haven.
Second is bumble foot. Hard surfaces greatly contribute to bumbles which are an infection in the foot caused by injury.
Third they will need to be able to scratch around and dust bathe. Dust bathing is how they stay free of mites and lice. Scratching around is a very strong instinct they simply MUST follow.

I use pine shavings in my coop and whatever organic material I can get my hands on in the run. I put grass clippings (mulching mower to chop them fine), garden plants and veggies and fall leaves. The birds keep it all stirred up and the organics combined with chicken droppings provide a dry odor free run with occasionally enough built up composted material to put some in the gardens.

I do agree it looks to small for 10 adult birds. You need roughly a minimum of 50 square feet for the coop and 100 square feet for the run.

Don't think "keeping them warm" for winter think "keeping them dry and well ventilated". They wear a down coat year round.

 

[3KillerBs]

Welcome to BYC.

Any dry, organic material will work for your coop and your run. I like the Deep Bedding method and have written an article about it: https://www.backyardchickens.com/articles/using-deep-bedding-in-a-small-coop.76343/

One of the keys to making Deep Bedding work properly is having adequate ventilation so that the bedding stays bone-dry and thus dries out the poop so fast that neither bacteria nor fly maggots can grow in it. The usual guidelines are to have 1 square foot of ventilation per adult, standard-sized hen.

If odor is a major concern you need to make sure that your ventilation is at the very top of the coop because ammonia rises.

My favorite coop bedding is pine shavings because they are more absorbent than straw and less prone to packing and matting. I prefer the large-flake sort, which are fluffier and thus dry out better.

In the run I like a mix of materials better than any one material with the base being mainly pine straw -- because it's free for the raking on my property. Chunky wood chips, the sort you get from a tree-trimming service, are generally considered the gold standard for keep a run free of odor and mud but many people successfully use dry leaves, straw, and other organic material either instead of wood chips or in combination with them.

The people who have success with sand in the coop and run are usually both located in a dry climate and motivated to do intensive maintenance. The latter is a matter of personal style. My preference for using Deep Bedding is in larger part because I would rather have a 1-2 hour job every 6-12 weeks than a 10 minute job daily.

Neither way is wrong, just different.

 

[esme13]

Hi and welcome byc!

I agree with what the others have recommended to you. Pine shavings are the best in order control and maintenance. I’ve tried sand once and live in nys. The problem I had with the sand was it retained to much moisture. And unless you scoop it everyday, the poop crumbled. It became a very smelly gross mess when I finally removed it all.

 

[ypease]

Congratulations on your new (well, not by now) Chicken Parenthood! I use Compost in the run (yep! I fill my pick up about every other yr and refill the run and top off my gardens). And chopped straw in the coop. I like chopped straw because of it's compostability. I used chips for a while, but they took forever to decompose in the garden. I just love to recycle that poop in my gardens! My neighbors always ask why I have such wonderful veggies in my garden, and why everything looks so healthy. My gardening secret is all in the poop!