We have several large piles of mulch/wood chips from when we have to take out ponderosa pine trees that are infected with mountain pine beetle. All the branches get fed through a chipper/shredder and I use it on pathways and flower beds and stuff I thought I'd try it in my chicken run. I divided the main part of the run roughly in half with a 2'X6' and filled the side closest to the coop with about 2" of the mulch, leaving the other half the gritty, gravely dirt that is what we call top soil where I live. Now, you are probably aware that my chickens have been using their run for about a week so I can't really address the long term pros and cons of it other than the chickens seem to like to scratch around in it and it was free and required very little work on my part to shovel it into a wheel barrow and dump it into the run. I figure when I need to clean it out it goes right in my compost pile.
