how to get my run smelling fresher

[wildwestcoast]

Is your run soggy at all? Ours is somewhat flooded just now—the lower bit—and it has been smelling bad from rotting vegetable matter, not chicken poop. They haven’t even used that part until the last week or so, as it’s been covered with snow for most of their lives. I wish it would stop raining and snowing so things could dry up.

I emptied out the used deep bedding from their coop into the wet area of the run and gave them a couple bales of straw for inside. That helped, actually.

You might try adding a good layer of spoiled hay, dried grass clippings, pine chips/shavings, pine straw... whatever absorbent material you can get your hands on. You can compost the run materials, in the actual run. The chickens will turn it for you. If it starts to smell like poop, you need more carbon.

No it's not soggy but I live in a rainforest pretty much so it gets well watered. I have decent drainage in my location. I think my mistake was raking up all the downed leaves etc. and just leaving the dirt exposed. I should leave the pen alone and stick to just cleaning the coop lol. I will put some shavings in and maybe some hay for now. It's not super stinky, I'm just concerned about it becoming that way with the weather warming up

 

[wildwestcoast]

What is your bioload (# of birds and square footage of run)? Different methods are appropriate for different setups. Is your run well drained or probe to drainage issues?

I'm going to guess 20 feet by 20 foot pen. Currently 4 hens. The coop sits in the middle of the pen, I use shavings in the coop. The pen is dirt mainly and a bit if gravel. There is a large maple over the pen so it gets lots of shade and leaves in the fall. I dont find the run to be terrible smelling my concern is keeping it stay that way to not annoy my neighbors. It seems to smell the most in summer when it heats up. I am adding 6 chickens this weekend in an adjacent run with a separate coop. That run just has gravel at the moment and also has good drainage. My main objective is staying ahead of the smell..and it probably wouldn't hurt to give the neighbors some eggs once in a while

 

[wildwestcoast]

I don’tKnow what DLM is for now we put a lil shavings in the coop under the nesting Matt’s we bought on amazon .. they are pretty young & won’t start laying until August! I will offer them when their older some greens maybe a cold watermelon in the summer etc... but will clean it up at night.. I do not want to invite rodents etc.. I bring their food in at night also... I might be going overboard lol love these lil girls already!

Chickens are so much fun. I tend to go a bit overboard myself

 

[wildwestcoast]

From reading through everyone's comments I realize I have been working against myself by removing the fallen leaves, dirty bedding etc.

 

[XanderWiFi]

Yep, you have a built in compost production set up! We dump all our leaves, grass clippings and scraps in the 30x20 run. They spread it out and dig and dig and poop and poop and in a year you will have good stuff for your garden.

 

[aart]

When I replace the chips

Chips or shavings? Shavings aren't big enough...chunky chips are best.

From reading through everyone's comments I realize I have been working against myself by removing the fallen leaves, dirty bedding etc.

Yep. Just add materials, keeping a balance of sizes.

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

I'm going to guess 20 feet by 20 foot pen. Currently 4 hens. The coop sits in the middle of the pen, I use shavings in the coop. The pen is dirt mainly and a bit if gravel. There is a large maple over the pen so it gets lots of shade and leaves in the fall. I dont find the run to be terrible smelling my concern is keeping it stay that way to not annoy my neighbors. It seems to smell the most in summer when it heats up. I am adding 6 chickens this weekend in an adjacent run with a separate coop. That run just has gravel at the moment and also has good drainage. My main objective is staying ahead of the smell..and it probably wouldn't hurt to give the neighbors some eggs once in a while

Definitely a candidate for deep litter

 

[LaLonnie Nelson]

Hi there our coop is 5c6 do a little over 5 sq. feet per bird ( we have only 4 birds) the run is 12x12 so roughly 25 square feet per bird .. our run is not prone to drainage issues as an extra pre-caution we dug a trench and laid a drainage pipe with the holes in it and then filled it with drainage rock .. I am sure our method is not appropriate for every one .. but so far it is working for us! I wish we could let our girls free range some..we’re planning on keeping only 4 birds at any given time.. would like to have more but feel this is manageable for us.. especially the cleaning part! So glad to have found this forum

 

[CindyR]

Hi all, we finally got some nice sunny warm days up here in western Canada I was out in the yard working on the new coop and noticed the chicken smell was a little stonger than my neighbours might appreciate. (I live in town) I read in an old thread about using food grade diotomaceous earth in the run. just wondering how much I need to use and how often I would need to reapply. also other people suggest lime? can I use both or is one better than the other?

 

[CindyR]

A simple method for a fresher smelling pen is to turn the soil and if it's overly dry to moisten it a bit. My pen is covered and gets very little moisture. I find that by mid summer it starts to get a little sour and stale smelling. A few times over the summer I water the soil, not much, just 3 or 4 large watering cans full, the moisture helps the poop etc. break down. I also turn the soil with a pitchfork once every couple of years which gets the poop into the dirt which also helps it break down. The chickens love the freshly turned soil. And if it's slightly moist all the better. They find all kinds of bugs and tasty things to eat. Those two things freshen things up considerably.