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

[Debbie292d]

After reading this thread, we are considering changing to pine pellets. Our coop is 10X10, with a very tall ceiling. Our girls have decided that the rafters are where they want to be, instead of the roosting bars. Our ladder/ramp is at a height that is easy for them to hop to from the rafters; however, they still seem to want to fly directly off the rafter to the floor below. Our floors are painted wood, so it tends to be a slippery surface. They've played slip and slide with the pine shavings at times. Would a 3" layer of pellets be sufficient to cushion their landing without slippage? What are your thoughts on wetting a couple bags of pellets to create sawdust, letting that dry completely, and then adding a hefty layer of whole pellets on top of that? Would that help in any way with the slippery surface?

Our floor is linoleum, but these are silkies who jump at most 1'; they use ladders to get up and down.

I'd try it either way, as I can't really say. I do know the sawdust is dust free unlike regular sawdust, so there's the plus side. I'm just thinking with the sawdust on top, then the poop is on top, and the pellets below never do their job.

What if you mixed the pellets with the sawdust?

 

[Jbug799]

Unfortunately, my chickens have a taste for sawdust... when my neighbor cut down a dead tree, there was sawdust around it and our chickens started eating it!!

Just out of curiosity are the pine pellets at Tractor Supply the same ones that some people use for cat litter? Can it be used in nesting boxes? Thanks

 

[Debbie292d]

Just out of curiosity are the pine pellets at Tractor Supply the same ones that some people use for cat litter? Can it be used in nesting boxes? Thanks

Yes, they are the same. And I'm ashamed to say we still haven't tried it yet for cat litter. We also use them in the parrot cages for the areas where they poop the most and they work well there. They're in cat litter boxes in the bottom of the cages and I stir them once a week or so.

They are in my nesting boxes too.

 

[sean_wonder]

And I'm ashamed to say we still haven't tried it yet for cat litter.

In my experience pelleted cat litter SUCKS. Soooo horrible to use and clean, very wasteful too bc hard to avoid getting clean pellets out.

 

[Midnight Maran Momma]

My experience with this is frustrating. I raked 4 bags of pine pellets into the run which is 108 square feet. Then the hurricane hit and we received a couple inches of rain. Due to the high winds we had to remove the top roof tarp so it wouldn't sail away as it's an open air run. That said, of course the run became soaked. The run is now filled with 3-4 inches of nothing but wet pine shavings and it stinks to high Heaven. Not a fresh pine smell like one might think. Since the rain last Thursday, every day, multiple times a day, I am scraping the saw dust around to loosen it up since it became nothing but a solid concrete smelly mess. I don't like the girls walking around on wet saw dust and they don't seem to like it. They no longer scratch around even after I loosen it. We left the roof tarp off for two days so the sun could dry it out, which it hasn't. I am terribly disappointed and don't know how to mitigate the bad saw dust odor. What can I use to help with the smell or should I just spend a day in back breaking work to remove it all? I am using the TSC pine pellets for horse stalls, so probably the same stuff you all are talking about. I see where it works well for SourRoses who also lives in humid Florida so I don't understand why our situation is so different. Is the difference because it's an open air run? I can't leave it uncovered as we've been in triple digit heat indexes here for days now - today it was 104 and the girls will absolutely roast without the top cover. I have a fan running 24x7 for air movement anyway but that is not helping to dry things out as I would think it should. Do i dump dirt from the compost pile on top of it and try to mix it in? Will that make it worse? If I add more pellets on top of what's already there, it will probably turn to saw dust also since it's a wet environment. Thoughts? Suggestions please. Thank you

THIS!!! I had dirt and grass when we started our run, not expecting the grass to last long (it didn't). There was incredibly hard clay under the thin layer of dirt, but the chickens enjoyed the dust baths from the clay they dug up. Then, the rains came..and our run flooded. Everyone said 'use pine pellets!', so I did. More rain came. Lather, rinse, repeat. Everything Seemed fine, but then we covered our run, and about a month afterward, there was this nasty smell.. The chickens started breaking up the 'dirt', but is was a Thick crust of sawdust. Over and over again, they would bring these chunks up, and a really foul stink would come from that area. I took my shovel out yesterday, and found we have about 3-4" of Solid pellet sawdust, with the bottom half damp sawdust and chicken poo. Now I've got to go out and break it all up with my shovel to scoop it out, wheelbarrow it to the pointy end of our 1 acre triangle shaped yard (where nobody's house is near), then grab mulch from the beech/oak/maple trees we had cut down and chipped, bring umpteen loads of That back to fill the run, and pray that works better and doesn't get as stinky as the dirt/pellets did. Ugh! At least we've got all outs behind a 6' privacy fence with no taller neighbors on the chicken's side of our house.
How'd your removal & run change go? My sympathies!

 

[Bawkbok]

I know your pain. We have switched to a total organic deep litter method. Since doing that, no smell at all; only a good earthy dirt smell. It is comprised of dirt from the compost pile, dried leaves raked from the yard, mulch from the fire pit logs from trees we cut down, a little bit of ash from the fire pit and an occasional bag of oak mulch from big box store just for more substance. They love digging in it and taking dirt baths. Since we are in the dry season (lasts months), every few weeks, I hose it down, till it over and hose it again to cut down on the dust factor as it breaks down. It is very hot and dry here. For poops, I'm out there frequently enough that I pick up what I see just to cut down on the flies; some of it I just turn over into the dirt. As mentioned, there is no rank smell at all.
I will never use pine pellets again. I know they work great for some people. I suppose it's a climate issue.