If you use PDZ and/or sand, PLEASE reply! :)

[pboyle]

I am new to chickens, but I use about an inch of pdz on my poop board, and scoop it evey other day with kitty litter scoop. Easy, and NO smell. Much of the pdz spills onto the floor when I sift it into my compost bucket. The floor is sand over hardwarecloth over dirt floor. I rake the sand and remove clumps, feathers and pine shavings that fall from the nest boxes, once evey weeks.

My run is all sand over hardware cloth over dirt (no pdz) and while it compacts in the rain, the chicken scratch up the sand to bathe as soon as it gets sunny again. I rake the run every couple weeks and remove clumps. I cannot get all the poo this way because as I rake the dry clumps disintegrate and blend into the sand. I figure it will wash through the sand next time it rains. But just in case, I have also been adding a wheelbarrel of sand once a month to freshen things up. I think I will remove a few wheelbarrels as a real clean out in the fall. But right now it is still pretty soft and clean and I have very happy birds.

I agree with other post that so few people are brave enough to photo coops and runs other than when they are fresh and new. I have to say that I feel good when my coop has been cleaned. I find it an investment into the health of my chickens. They seem to like it too! I have heard them purr when they get fresh fluffy sand to mess around in on a warm summer day. Like a day at the beach!

I highly recommend PDZ and sand. But PDZ is not really needed outside the coop.

 

[javaferret]

@aart
I mix about a half cup- one cup of the powdered PDZ in the clumping cat litter (large litter box due to huge cats). I found out that being the powder version I had to make sure to put in the bottom of the litter box and put the litter over it, because scooping the litter with powder just mixed in all over makes for a dusty scoop session digging for clumps in the box.

I have been using it for a couple of weeks and it is AMAZING. I have two mainecoons, and using the PDZ has cut down any and all odor completely. It is pretty awesome. I tend to keep the boxes scooped every day to sometimes every two days cause I really hate the smell of cat urine. Since I been showing the house to sell, I really wanted to make sure there was absolutely no cat smell and this stuff works.

 

[giannini]

I agree with other post that so few people are brave enough to photo coops and runs other than when they are fresh and new. I have to say that I feel good when my coop has been cleaned. I find it an investment into the health of my chickens. They seem to like it too! I have heard them purr when they get fresh fluffy sand to mess around in on a warm summer day. Like a day at the beach!

I highly recommend PDZ and sand. But PDZ is not really needed outside the coop.

I forgot I was gonna post my coop before I cleaned it today. It took me about 10 minutes to "scoop the poop", and a few feathers out. I had done it about 3 days ago. The amount retrieved barely covered the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket. Afterwards, I sprinkled a little PDZ inside, and in the run, I sprinkled a little PDZ, and some DE.





This sand has been in my coop and run for about 3 months. I just lift the debris out with a kitty litter scoop. I have severe arthritis in my knees, and feet so I had to try and find the easiest way to keep the area clean so my chicks could be as healthy as possible.

 

[Augiemcd]

Aart: Thank you for posting the "how I did it" link. My contractor has been building our coop and is making the poop drawer and perches today. I thought the poop drawer would need to be a lot deeper, but if you only put in an inch of PDZ, 5" is too deep a drawer, and wastes roosting space. And as a new chicken mama, I didn't realize that they will dust bathe everywhere, so less PDZ is definitely better (and cost effective).
Planning for deep liter method in the coop. We have very sandy soil (our house is build on Torrey Sandstone) but it's fine sand, and the run was starting to smell so I scattered PDZ in there and added a few bags of construction grade sand last week.

I want to add sand to my run because we have mud when it rains. Do your chickens eat the sand

 

[Krugerrand]

I want to add sand to my run because we have mud when it rains. Do your chickens eat the sand

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[Red Horse]

I used sweet pdz last summer as bedding for the whole inside of the coop. It worked great all summer and there was no smell so I just figured I would change it out when it did start smelling. The chickens were dust bathing in it and probably eating it/the poop that was in it (I scooped it once daily in the evening when the poop from the night before was nice and hard). They ended up getting coccidiosis really bad that took forever to get rid of and it made me wonder if oocytes from their poop were getting left behind in the pdz and were being consumed during preening/picking at gross things and had built up. I was also not a fan of the dust and of some of the things I have heard about the silica being damaging to lung tissue, so I would love to hear other people's experiences about using this stuff long term... it really was awesome for keeping the smell down and very convenient to clean.

 

[NatJ]

I want to add sand to my run because we have mud when it rains. Do your chickens eat the sand

There are quite a few threads about sand in runs.

It seems to work best for people in dry climates, and not so well in wet places. Sand on top of mud usually turns into sand mixed with mud, which is pretty much still mud.

For dealing with mud, many people add large amounts of wood chips (the kind sold for mulch, or better yet sometimes they are free from a tree-trimming service that just needs a place to get rid of them.)

For runs with sand, yes the chickens eat some of it. But they typically just eat a few bits here and there and it does not cause any harm. Some chickens will overdo it when the sand is first put in, because it is new and exciting. So if you do put in sand, you should probably keep an eye on them for the first week or so, to notice if any problems happen. After that, if they didn't have a problem yet, they probably won't.