Pen Ground Cover?

[mberry222]

Does anyone put straw or any other material on the ground in their peafowl pens? If I don't put anything down the ground gets very muddy when we get a lot of rain. I have tried putting straw down which they seem to like but when it gets wet it draws earthworms which I'm not sure is good, eventhough I worm regularly. Any suggestions?
Thanks

 

[Atlchick]

I've been putting pine wood shavings from our millwork shop. Hope that's OK - looking for answers, too!

 

[Pandora]

I'm open to anyone elses suggestions on this!

I put down a nice thick base of sand. Layered that with shredded cypress mulch (the softest I could find), and rounded wood nuggets (I use pine bark shavings for the chickens). Topped with a light dusting of sand. Nothing sharp that could poke feet. I then disinfect and clean as needed.
This seems to work well so far.

I've tried just sand... it didn't work as well as I hoped. Still stayed wet, we've been getting lots of rain.
I've tried just mulch, it worked for a bit, but they had it back down to bare earth quickly.

For winter coop cleaning, I'm toying with the idea of putting down some cardboard and then layering with straw. That way it could all be scraped out rather quickly. Straw tends to stick to the floor in the coop otherwise.

 

[Cadet_Jeff]

We use leaves for ours peacocks and chickens. We live on 25 acres of forest and leaves are in abundance here The birds love to peck though them and they make great additions to the compost pile when we strip pens.

Anyone have any reason for not using leaves?

Jeff

 

[peachick]

I have been using mulch. If you go to your county dump where they take your dead trees and shrubs... they make mulch out of it, and give it away for free. The pile of much at my dump is usually bigger than my house! We back up the old truck to it. the man on the big tractor rolls up and overflows the back of the truck.... I dont even need to get out of the truck

... its pretty easy.... and ya cant beat the price!