Hemp bedding

[perchie.girl]

Hemp bedding is available in the US... but $$$.

http://www.americanhempllc.com/#!horse-bedding/c1iam

Found it a while ago... forgot to post it.... I am a dufus.... Oh and this one is in Florida... Shipping might be a deal breaker...

prices

 

[vehve]

It's been a week now, so I thought I'd share some experiences. So far, only two or three of our flock have been sleeping in the coop out of our seven birds. The rest have been sleeping in the run. So we haven't really had that much poop production in the coop, but the poop that has landed there has been super easy to clear out. It's easy to spot it on the hemp. The stuff we haven't picked up has mixed nicely into the bedding. No smell to be noticed so far. When turning the bedding, I cant notice any dust rising from it, so in that sense it's superior to the peat we used earlier, and like mentioned earlier, the color makes spotting droppings easier compared to peat too, if you do a more regular clearing of droppings. I suspect that once the weather starts to get a bit colder, we'll be having some more droppings going in to the bedding, so it will really be put to the test.

 

[vehve]

Still very satisfied with the hemp, it's stayed very clean. We bought a kitty litter scoop yesterday, and tried it out today. It worked great together with the hemp, most of the bedding just falls through leaving the poop with a bit of bedding stuck to it in the scoop.

 

[Live2exell]

Thanks and yes wow that is a huge difference in cost compared to straw!

 

[vehve]

We've been having pretty rainy weather, and humidity has been over 90%. The chickens have been sleeping in the coop now, so we're starting to put the hemp to it's test. The bedding is staying bone dry, and no smell can be noticed in the coop. Thanks to the kitty litter scoop, we're not even removing that much bedding during our daily clean, just the poop. I still haven't found any negative sides to hemp.

 

[Cluckies]

This stuff sounds really good, I wish it was more widely available in the states! can't wait for further updates through the winter on this. how big is your coup and how many bags did you need?

 

[vehve]

The coop is about 28 square feet, and the run is about 65 square feet. I've got one bale in the coop, still haven't changed it and I don't see a need for a long time. We just dumped another bale in the run under the roosts to take up the worst of the poop, it's been working nicely there. The rest of the run is filled with dried maple leaves, and sand/soil underneath all of this.

 

[vehve]

Okay, some updates. As we've gone into winter, the chickens haven't wanted to leave the run anymore, and the arrival of chicks a bit over a week ago has added to the poop load inside the coop. So far, the bedding has been staying very dry, but a slight odor is noticeable. I wouldn't call it all that strong, and not necessarily that unpleasant either, but you can clearly smell that animals are kept in the coop. Haven't had a need to change the bedding yet, just doing small daily cleanups still. We do add a bit of hemp every once in a while to balance out the daily removals, but we're only about a quarter through the second bale.

 

[vehve]

Time for a little update again. It's been over 4 months since we changed the bedding the last time. It still stays nice and dry, and the only time you really smell something unpleasant, is when the chicks that have now spent 7 weeks cooped up in the bedding let out some wetter poops. But they mix into the bedding pretty quickly too. There's a slight sweet smell in there, I think there's something happening on the bottom due to the multiple bowls of water that were spilled in there before the chicks learned to use the waterers. The little ones are showing signs of starting to spend some time out in the run soon, and then I think we'll change the bedding in there.

 

[Cluckies]

Thanks for the update, sounds great!