Please help me modify my run floor

[DobieLover]

Beautiful run and flock! Tell me more…what’s on the chair? Do your chickens eat suet? I saw the cage hanging. Thanks for the advice.

My broody breaker is on the chair.
My chickens do not eat suet. There is no cage hanging in there. I'm not sure what you are looking at.

 

[Faisonfarm]

Completely different climate and soil, but we started with sand in our chicken run. Loved it the first year. I scooped the poop twice a day and it was nice and soft for the chickens. By the second year, we were having issues with the main space compacting like concrete and having to use a hoe to break up the surface. The sand also began to smell anytime it got wet. We ended up removing the sand and spreading it on part of the driveway. Our driveway stunk for months! We now use a combination of wood chips, pine needles, shavings and straw to build up a base taller than the surrounding ground to keep the run dry during our spring floods.

Hi, how do you clean your run then? We have sand currently and are contemplating removing it bc it keeps coming out of our sloped run.

 

[RubelliteRose]

Hi, how do you clean your run then? We have sand currently and are contemplating removing it bc it keeps coming out of our sloped run.

The best part about having wood chip/pine needles in the run is that now we don't need to clean it! The poop mixes with the run material and composts fairly quickly. If I wasn't trying to build up the elevation, I would have amazing compost for my garden. I have learned that dirt starting to show equals smell, but the smell goes away when I add a somewhat thin layer of woody materials to restart the composting process.