How much bedding do you need?

[CrystalAnon]

My chicken ripped her comb 95% off on hardware cloth!

Oh geez! Poor gal!
How did that happen?

 

[MarlaMac]

I’ll be a first time chicken owner in a month. I’m getting everything I need together now.
I thought for sure there would be a thread on how much bedding you need to have on hand to last a while, especially with the difficulty it’s been to get certain things sometimes. I could not find a thread on this, so I apologize if this has been talked about before.
About how long, in your experience, will 88lbs of hemp bedding last?
I know everyone has a different situation, but we have a coop that’s slightly smaller than 8ft by 6ft 7in (outside measurements) about 50 sq feet inside. We’re only planning on spreading bedding in the coop, as needed & the laying boxes. Not in the run. And of course, as bedding for the chicks in the brooder for 5-6 weeks. We’ll have 10 chicks (god willing) when they arrive & likely a couple less once we figure out which of the 4 straight run chicks are female or male.
About how long do you folks think 88lbs could last, with daily (and probably obsessive) cleaning?
I’m probably overthinking & overbuying… but this is so important to me to have everything they need & more.
Thank you!!!

I am an obsessive coup cleaner. What I do to cut down on the amount of bedding I use is spreading towels (chicken coup only towels) over the bedding before the chickens go to roost in the evening. I pick up these towels in the morning after everyone is out and put the poop in the compost pile and bring the towels in and put in a chicken towel only basket and do a load of laundry every couple of days to clean for reuse. My coup stays perfectly clean and I only have to worry about an occasional poop from a gal going in to lay or if broody momma takes her brood inside to get out of the wind.

Once every couple of weeks, I clean the bedding out, put it in the compost pile, clean the coop floor and roosts with vinegar/water solution. No problems with bugs to date and the ammonia does not have a chance to build up b/c no waste to degrade.

Have fun with your chickens!

 

[Ascholten]

F french drain is basically like a septic pipe, they sell them in the Home Depot / Lowes etc stores, even TSC might have them. Think of a 4 inch pipe with a bunch of holes drilled into it. You put this around the perimeter of your coop area. The holes are small enough they don't let a lot of stuff get into the pipe, especially if you have gravel / rock around it, but DO let the water drop down into the pipe, to collect and run off / get pumped out etc, whatever works for your situation. People use this for water removal from areas where it may pool.

You may be on the mountain (Mount Trashmore don't count !! ) but all it takes is a small swail or dip and you can collect water.

if it's running off then you should be ok. When you get a torrential downpour and it pools for an hour or so, that's pretty normal, but if it sits there murrking around for most of the day, that's not good. I think you'll be fine.

Aaron

 

[luckycluk]

A lot of us do the deep bedding method which means 6" of bedding in the coop to start, and just add throughout the season until you clean it out. Lots of people do a big clean in spring, and reset the bedding, and then again in the fall. Hope that helps! Your package of hemp will likely saw how many square metres or feet it will cover etc as well. In the brooder and coop I also mix shredded newspaper. Free and available and easy.

You mentioned shredded newspaper , im not sure how your local newspaper does but our newspaper gives away the end rolls, no ink on them and we use our paper shredder. I use pine shavings and a mix in the laying boxes of shredded paper n shavings. I’m not real pleased with pine shavings. Can any of the natural cat litters work?

 

[CrystalAnon]

I am an obsessive coup cleaner. What I do to cut down on the amount of bedding I use is spreading towels (chicken coup only towels) over the bedding before the chickens go to roost in the evening. I pick up these towels in the morning after everyone is out and put the poop in the compost pile and bring the towels in and put in a chicken towel only basket and do a load of laundry every couple of days to clean for reuse. My coup stays perfectly clean and I only have to worry about an occasional poop from a gal going in to lay or if broody momma takes her brood inside to get out of the wind.

Once every couple of weeks, I clean the bedding out, put it in the compost pile, clean the coop floor and roosts with vinegar/water solution. No problems with bugs to date and the ammonia does not have a chance to build up b/c no waste to degrade.

Have fun with your chickens!

I totally envision myself doing that same thing. I was going to get some old painters blankets for under the roosts at night, but I think the towels would probably be easier to come by & possibly easier to clean in the washer! I love it!
I’m getting a few gallons of apple cider vinegar from Azure for cleaning, so I’m definitely going to be using that.
I was curious if anyone here have heard of Chlorine Dioxide for cleaning? The brand I buy for cleaning is called “Nok-Out”. I use it for cleaning almost everything. It’s used for food-safe cleaning, so you can use it on countertops in the kitchen & every other surface. It was mainly a game-changer for me in cleaning up cat pee. My poor kitty broke her tail, right down at the base a while back. (My theory is that she might have narrowly missed being hit by a car & it ran over her tail while she was still running. That’s my only theory as to how she could have broken it there. ) So after that, she can’t help but tinkle when she’s sleeping, if she has a kitty nightmare. So we had to find something to get rid of the smell! My marriage was dependent on it, because I wasn’t my going to kick her out of the house!
Not-Out did the trick! In fact, it works so well & is so safe, you can spray it directly on a pet that’s been sprayed by a skunk to get rid of the stench! It neutralizes it by a mini explosion whenever CD comes in contact with a poison, bacteria or any other nasty… it releases the two oxygen atoms it contains. So actually, when you use it internally (I don’t use the Nok-Out formula for that purpose) it ups the oxygen levels in your body. But the same happens when cleaning with it.
I was just wondering if anyone else have used Chlorine Dioxide for cleaning in the coop. Could probably work for mites & things of that sort as well. It’s also a great wound cleaner. It does not effect healthy tissues, like Hydrogen Peroxide can.

 

[CrystalAnon]

You mentioned shredded newspaper , im not sure how your local newspaper does but our newspaper gives away the end rolls, no ink on them and we use our paper shredder. I use pine shavings and a mix in the laying boxes of shredded paper n shavings. I’m not real pleased with pine shavings. Can any of the natural cat litters work?

I’ve heard here some people use the horse stall pellets for under their bedding.
I just purchased some kitty litter yesterday pine pellets, to see if my cat will actually use them & we could get her that instead of traditional litter. My sister uses it with her cat & it doesn’t smell at all… just smells like pine, which is pretty cool.
Hopefully the chickens wouldn’t mistake it for chicken feed pellets.

 

[Ascholten]

I would not use kitty litter. They may mistake it for food and eat it and that would not be good for them.

 

[MarlaMac]

I totally envision myself doing that same thing. I was going to get some old painters blankets for under the roosts at night, but I think the towels would probably be easier to come by & possibly easier to clean in the washer! I love it!
I’m getting a few gallons of apple cider vinegar from Azure for cleaning, so I’m definitely going to be using that.
I was curious if anyone here have heard of Chlorine Dioxide for cleaning? The brand I buy for cleaning is called “Nok-Out”. I use it for cleaning almost everything. It’s used for food-safe cleaning, so you can use it on countertops in the kitchen & every other surface. It was mainly a game-changer for me in cleaning up cat pee. My poor kitty broke her tail, right down at the base a while back. (My theory is that she might have narrowly missed being hit by a car & it ran over her tail while she was still running. That’s my only theory as to how she could have broken it there. ) So after that, she can’t help but tinkle when she’s sleeping, if she has a kitty nightmare. So we had to find something to get rid of the smell! My marriage was dependent on it, because I wasn’t my going to kick her out of the house!
Not-Out did the trick! In fact, it works so well & is so safe, you can spray it directly on a pet that’s been sprayed by a skunk to get rid of the stench! It neutralizes it by a mini explosion whenever CD comes in contact with a poison, bacteria or any other nasty… it releases the two oxygen atoms it contains. So actually, when you use it internally (I don’t use the Nok-Out formula for that purpose) it ups the oxygen levels in your body. But the same happens when cleaning with it.
I was just wondering if anyone else have used Chlorine Dioxide for cleaning in the coop. Could probably work for mites & things of that sort as well. It’s also a great wound cleaner. It does not effect healthy tissues, like Hydrogen Peroxide can.

Never heard of it. I find white vinegar does wonders in the coop. The only thing I would say is research it for use near the very sensitive lungs of your chickens.

 

[CrystalAnon]

I would not use kitty litter. They may mistake it for food and eat it and that would not be good for them.

I def would not us kitty litter. I don’t even like it for my kitty.

 

[MarlaMac]

I would not use kitty litter. They may mistake it for food and eat it and that would not be good for them.

Especially if it clumps. That would wreck havoc on the digestive system.