Pine pellets for coop bedding??? Does it work?? I'm curious....

[Taj MaHen]

Thinking about making the switch to pine pellets today when we clean out the coops! How many bags do you guys use for your coops? Like, how many inches of pellets should there be on the floor?

I tried shavings, sand and straw, pellets have been a game changer for me!! No smell, WAY fewer flies in summer,so EASY to clean, cheap (less than $6.50 bag here) and lasts a long time. I have a roughly 8x10' coop and started w/3-4 bags on the floor and 2 on my poop tray. I usually have to add maybe 1 a month as I clean it. (curious to see how that changes once I move the pr of geese out) I keep it roughly 3-4" deep. I highly recommend it!e

 

[Taj MaHen]

Thinking about making the switch to pine pellets today when we clean out the coops! How many bags do you guys use for your coops? Like, how many inches of pellets should there be on the floor?

I tried shavings, sand and straw, pellets have been a game changer for me!! No smell, WAY fewer flies in summer,so EASY to clean, cheap (less than $6.50 bag here) and lasts a long time. I have a roughly 8x10' coop and started w/3-4 bags on the floor and 2 on my poop tray. I usually have to add maybe 1 a month as I clean it. (curious to see how that changes once I move the pr of geese out) I keep it roughly 3-4" deep. I highly recommend it!e

 

[talkinboutchickens]

We just cleaned the coops yesterday and put in pine pellet bedding, it looks awesome! Except, they are rummaging though it looking for small pieces to eat

 

[WingItRanch]

We just cleaned the coops yesterday and put in pine pellet bedding, it looks awesome! Except, they are rummaging though it looking for small pieces to eat

That's just from curiosity- they'll loose interest fast when they realize it's not food. I use it in my main run and recently added it to my grow out pen due to puddled rain and the chicks were curious at first but now just dust bathe in it.

 

[talkinboutchickens]

The portion of my coop that I used them in is 10'x6.5' and I used four 40 lb bags and it wasn't enough, maybe only a couple inches. When the chickens hopped down onto them from the roosts or nesting boxes they slid and their legs slipped out from under them like they landed on marbles. So deeper is better. Adding a couple more inches in my coop would have been too costly for me, so I gave up on them.

I totally get that! I do hope they don't have trouble getting down, their perches are about 5 feet high.

 

[talkinboutchickens]

That's just from curiosity- they'll loose interest fast when they realize it's not food. I use it in my main run and recently added it to my grow out pen due to puddled rain and the chicks were curious at first but now just dust bathe in it.

Ok good! that settles my nerves. I'll keep an eye on them and see if they stop eating it

 

[Peregrinefalcon13]

We've used pellets, shaving and now sand. We find sand is the best. Super easy poop clean up with a sifter wand, doesn't smell and drains extremely well.

 

[romea]

Turned to sawdust, an inch and a half should be more than 3 inches, based on my experience.

In my pigeon aviary I always spray mine with water to decompose them into sawdust right from the get-go. The right amount of water will cause them to break down without making the resulting sawdust feel wet, and with time any water will evaporate and the dry sawdust will dry out the droppings just fine. I find it much more comfortable to walk on the sawdust than on the pellets.

In the cat litter boxes, where the cats themselves provide copious amounts of liquid, I just put in a couple pellets worth of depth (less than inch) and by the time it has all broken down due to the cats’ generous contributions I have 3+ inches in there.

(In my chicken coop I use cardboard shreds because that’s free and also works.)

How dusty is this broken down version in your pigeon aviary? I am looking for something that I can use indoors, that is as dust-free as possible and that can be cleaned with a cat litter scoop...

 

[avjudge]

How dusty is this broken down version in your pigeon aviary? I am looking for something that I can use indoors, that is as dust-free as possible and that can be cleaned with a cat litter scoop...

I’m afraid I really can’t say, since it is surrounded by hardware cloth and packed down pretty well by human feet as I tend to them. They do not scratch as chickens do.

I will say that people using it in horse stalls are all over the place, reporting it to be anything from dust free to very dusty. To some degree that seems to depend on the source, as apparently some pellets create more fine dust than others. I don’t know how much that variation is in the handling, reflecting variations in relative humidity, whether it is put in dry (pellets) or fluffed (sawdust), or if it is just people‘s tolerance of dust.

Used straight from the bag in cat litter boxes, as it breaks down to sawdust from the cat pee, I do get significant tracking in the immediate vicinity of the box, but I don’t notice much dust. Of course there, even if it has been able to air dry, it is at least a little moist from the urine, which should not be the case when used for chickens.

 

[sean_wonder]

We've used pellets, shaving and now sand. We find sand is the best. Super easy poop clean up with a sifter wand, doesn't smell and drains extremely well.

What kind of sand do you use? I used to use sand in my run and always found that it would clump and harden over time, found it extremely frustrating to deal with as I like the concept in theory. How do you manage the dust?

I've always used pine pellets in the coop. They're my all time favorite bedding, Horse Pine Pellets from Tractor Supply. $8 per bag, only takes about 2-3 bags to have a nice plush layer. As it gets used, it turns into sawdust over time, and then I scoop the old coop litter out and reuse it for the run.

I will say, definitely wear a KN95 when cleaning. Histoplasmosis is no joke, and as the pellets disintegrate into sawdust they do become dusty. Not so much that I've ever had any respiratory issues from my girls, but still be careful.

When they were chicks, I kept them on wood shavings (underneath a layer of paper towels for the first couple days) because the color was much different than their crumbles and because I didn't want a pellet to dissolve in their water and cause issues that way.