I have a brooder with 6 banty chicks in it. Clean it every day when I get home at 4 p.m. and every day, I have to wash off every little chicky's footsies. I use shop towels for bedding. The brooder is probably 30-40 gallons. Would using wood chips help? Im am very afraid for the wellbeing of the chicks if they live in a diry enviroment when I'm not around to clean up their mess.
After the chicks are 3 days old, I put down pine shavings... and just add more when it get's a bit dirty... and when it get's real bad... I pick up the brooder and move it to new ground. They are in the house their first week of life so they are on pine shavings. From then on they are outside in their dirt floor brooder though that moves when I want it to.
Yeah, they need litter. Something absorbent. I've used pine shavings, sand, clean dry mulch, shredded paper. Just dont use cedar shavings and dont lay down litter until they are older than 5 days...they try to eat it before then.
After 6 days I moved to pine shavings, and I added new every second day and every other day I changed it. Till they were around 4 weeks and I moved them onto our enclosed patio - I just kept adding new shavings they were there for two weeks. I also put my chicks out starting at just before they were 2 weeks, first a couple of hours outside in a tractor and then all day out in the tractor! Putting them outside TOTALLy helps with cleaning and the smell. Edit to add; From day 1 I had pine shavings under papertowels - and just changed the paper towels once a day by rolling them up and adding new...