Let's talk bedding (in Texas)

[Celticdragonfly]

Hi all

So - I'm going to be getting a coop built here very soon, and my chicks arrive next week.

And I need to figure out bedding. Try sand? Corn cob bedding? Hemp? We live just north of Fort Worth, so it gets hot here.

The coop floor will be HDPE. I've messaged the coop builder asking about a poop board underneath. If we do that, I want to try the sweet PDZ stuff in the poop board, but we'd still want bedding on the floor underneath, right?

Inundate me with advice.

 

[ChickNanny13]

You'll be very happy you're having a poop board (PDA is great stuff) installed under the roost. Saves alot of time cleaning since chickens tend to poop alot at night while roosting What's HDPE? What's the dimensions of the coop? Run? How many chicks?

 

[SurferchickinSB]

Hi all

So - I'm going to be getting a coop built here very soon, and my chicks arrive next week.

And I need to figure out bedding. Try sand? Corn cob bedding? Hemp? We live just north of Fort Worth, so it gets hot here.

The coop floor will be HDPE. I've messaged the coop builder asking about a poop board underneath. If we do that, I want to try the sweet PDZ stuff in the poop board, but we'd still want bedding on the floor underneath, right?

Inundate me with advice.

I like sand myself, it’s easy to scoop out the poop every day and keeps everything dry. I don’t know how big the poop board is going to be, but on mine I put a piece of vinyl flooring material on top of it so that the moisture cannot soak in and I just use old newspaper on top of that, so in the morning I can just roll it up and throw it away and I put a new piece of paper On before they go to bed. I know I should compost, but I just have so many other things to do!I spend a lot of time with my chickens and I don’t like anything that is dirty or smells, LOL!

 

[Fishkeeper]

Have you read up about deep litter?

 

[ChickNanny13]

2x Fishkeeper = DLM
I that too, no cleaning well rarely any work Between poop board/PDZ + DLM = time to sit in the coop/run & enjoy.

 

[Celticdragonfly]

You'll be very happy you're having a poop board (PDA is great stuff) installed under the roost. Saves alot of time cleaning since chickens tend to poop alot at night while roosting What's HDPE? What's the dimensions of the coop? Run? How many chicks?

I hope they can do a poop board for me.

We were talking about a 4x4 coop with attached run so that the whole thing was 4x16 - but I was thinking I'd want it more square, so we were changing to 6x10. So a 6xsomething coop, not sure how that works out.

Which is going to be absolutely palatial - for the three chicks I'm going to start with. City requires 32 sq feet. But I have great hopes that the state house and senate will pass the bill that ups it to the minimum they can restrict you to is 6, so I'm setting things up so that we *could* go to 6 without having to completely start over.

Apparently HDPE is high-density polyethylene. I'm not terribly familiar with it - I just know it was this white plastic stuff that the coop builder was recommending, because it's way easier to clean than wood, and she showed us a sample in a coop they were building, and it sounded good to me.

 

[Celticdragonfly]

Have you read up about deep litter?

Some. Enough that I felt unsure about it. It did sound like composting was going to be an essential part of it. We don't have a compost pile, and I don't have a garden. I have a black thumb in the first place - animals I'm good with, plants not so much. Plus as a semi-handicapped woman who doesn't do well in the sun or the heat and can't bend well anymore, gardening just isn't feasible, unless I paid someone to build really high beds for me, like waist-height.

 

[aart]

Inundate me with advice.

That cracked me up!

What you bed your coop floor with depends on how you plan to manage manure.
This is about 'cleaning' but covers the my big picture:
-I use poop boards under roosts with thin(<1/2") layer of sand/PDZ mix, sifted daily(takes 5-10mins) into bucket going to friends compost.

-Scrape big or wet poops off roost and ramps as needed.

-Pine shavings on coop floor, add some occasionally, totally changed out once or twice a year, old shavings added to run.

-Runs have semi-deep litter, never clean anything out, just add smaller dry materials on occasion, add larger wood chippings as needed.

-Nests are bedded with straw, add some occasionally, change out if needed(broken egg).

There is no odor, unless a fresh cecal has been dropped and when I open the bucket to add more poop.

That's how I keep it 'clean', have not found any reason to clean 'deeper' in 5 years.

 

[Fishkeeper]

The deep litter IS the compost. You don't need a separate compost bin unless you want to take some of it out 'early' and cook it down faster for plants. If you don't have a garden, you can just keep adding stuff into the deep litter and never take the composted stuff out. Or you could let your neighbors know that you have compost and see if anyone wants to turn up and take some. Or if the litter gets too tall for your liking, just haul out the underlayer and scatter it across your lawn. Lawn soil tends to be in awful shape, all the leaves and weeds and grass clippings taken off instead of mulching down, compost is the best thing you can do for it.

 

[aart]

It did sound like composting was going to be an essential part of it. We don't have a compost pile, and I don't have a garden.

About the same here...why I give the poop to someone who does have a compost system and a garden to use it on.