Help!

[balingmomma88]

I have a small chicken coop and run. We put pine shaving in the coop and sand in the run. This has been working well but here is my problem ...

Last night we got a horrible rain and the run flooded. There was about two to three inches of water in.

Now the run is all mud! The chickens keep sinking in it and it smells horrible! I went out once or twice a week and scooped out all the poop but it smells horrible now!

Tomorrow I am taking the coop off and getting rid of all the sand. What should I do after?

I'm going to raise the coop off the ground. And put a large price of plywood under neath. Should I put sand again or just go with pine shavings?

 

[cavemanrich]

I hear your cry..... Here is my suggestion . It may or may not apply to your back yard. I'm not that far from you.
YES, IT HAS RAINED A LOT . Try to see if you can drain the area. An option is to build up the area under coop and run with a good quantity of stone sand pea gravel.. You know the level of water so you know how high to build up with sand. Your elevated run having sand in it will drain well next time you have a flooding situation. Pine shavings are not the answer. because when they get wet, they rot and susceptible to mold growth. NO NO NO. For good aesthetics use landscape timbers as a frame out, and fill the run area with sand and it wont be washing out and away. It is kind of like having a raised flower bed.


WISHING YOU DRYER DAYS,,

AND

ALSO JOIN OUR ILLINOIS THREAD.


https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/37/illinois

 

[Ridgerunner]

You might read this. It has a lot of different suggestions. Maybe you can get some ideas from it.

Pat’s Big Ol' Mud Page (fixing muddy runs):
https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=1642-fix-a-muddy-run

The smell is coming from wet poop as it breaks down. It can be pretty strong. It looks like you are in a low spot so building it up so the water has a place to drain to is a good idea. Keeping the run as dry as you can is your first line of defense.

I don’t know how many chickens you have in there or how big it is, but chickens poop a lot. A real problem in smaller runs or maybe coop/runs is that the poop levels build up over time. How fast and whether it becomes a problem depends a lot on chicken density, how many chickens you have pooping in how small an area. You can help yourself in the coop by using a droppings board to catch and remove a lot of poop from that build-up. In the run you might need to scoop out as much poop as you can to reduce that build-up. Some people do that daily.

One problem you might have if you just build up that area with sand is that you are creating a bathtub. Sand drains really well but clay doesn’t. Even if you build that area up with sand a lot of the water will be trapped in there with the poop that has filtered down through the sand. What I suggest is that you build that area up with clay soil first so it will drain, then top that with several inches of sand. That may take a lot of clay. You will need to contain the clay and sand to keep it from washing away. The chickens will scratch a lot too and they can scratch a lot of the sand or even clay out of the run.

If you have a lower area for the water to drain to, you might install a French drain from the run to that lower spot instead of filling it with clay. Water will flow downhill, not uphill. It has to have a place to go to.

Good luck! These things can be difficult. A lot of the solutions will depend on your soils type and drainage patterns.