Official BYC Poll: How Do You Get Rid of Dirty Coop Bedding?

[BYC Project Manager]

It is essential to keep your chicken coop clean if you raise chickens. This includes changing the bedding (regardless of the method you use).

This week, we want to find out: How Do You Get Rid of Dirty Coop Bedding?

Place your vote above, and please elaborate in a reply below if you chose "Other".

Further Reading:

• Coop Health: Designing and Maintaining a Healthy Coop
• Using Sand In Your Chicken Coop
• Deep Litter Method - The Easiest Way To Deal With Chicken Litter

(Check out more exciting Official BYC Polls HERE!)

 

[sourland]

Compost and later utilize it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The stuff on the droppings board goes in the compost. The stuff on the coop floor goes in the garden in the fall so it is ready for spring planting.

 

[Shadrach]

I'm using shredded paper for bedding currently. It goes on a bedding pile. I can't in any honesty call it a compost pile yet. Paper on it's own takes a long time to degrade. One day I will add vegetable matter and get in there with a fork and turn it over.
Before I got involved with these chickens the bedding was just scraped out of the coop onto the run floor. This has proven to be a complete disaster. It has made layers rather than fully compost into the ground below and rats have made tunnels below these layers, not to mention the mud/muck problem when it rains.

 

[MysteryChicken]

Compost it, & use as fertilizer for the gardens.

 

[Duckduckchicken32]

Compost it! It takes a while to break down, put that would be a lot of shavings in the garbage, we have three coops.

 

[3KillerBs]

Compost and then garden.

 

[Shadrach]

I'm not suggesting this will happen to everyone who scrapes bedding into the run, but this is what happened where I now look after the chickens.
The holes you can see are rat runs. The paper and poop has formed layers, beneath which is all sorts of stuff. I'll be digging it out in the future.
The rat runs go right underneath the coop and exit at the back.

 

[Ridgerunner]

and the tilled shavings are very much still there. I may need to rethink my strategy.

Its normal and healthy for garden soil to have organic matter in it, it will continue to break down and support colonies of microorganisms that help the soil. The poop will have broken down, that's what you want.

The wood shavings (a carbon) will tie up some nitrogen in the soil as they continue to break down, but the poop provided extra nitrogen. You can always fertilize with extra nitrogen too as long ss you don't overdo it. As long as they are mixed in with the soil and not a solid clump I would not worry about it. If they are a solid mass on top of the soil that is a mulch.

 

[Perris]

Dirty coop bedding here is sometimes composted; given to friends and neighbours as and when requested; added directly to the garden as fertilizer as needed; and added to the garden waste which the local council collect and compost, if there is still surplus after the first three options (as there sometimes is, especially in winter).