Wow - after MANY late night hours reading through hundreds of posts in this amazingly helpful thread, I finally made a plan to make some much needed changes to my coop. I have a 3x4 foot coop for 6 hens (4 of which are in brooder). Living in CA, they only need to be up there at night and for laying, so the space works OK. However, the ventilation is an issue, as is the tendency for the birds to want to stir up their fresh droppings early in the AM before I can scoop them up. Plus, I've been using rice hulls, which is fantastic for composting (did you know they attract worms and created a vermiculture rock star compost?). However, those flighty hulls are spread out everywhere around my runs, tidy yard, and throughout my house, garage, in all my shoes, even in my car! Ugh.
So off I went to purchase the sweet PDZ, put 3/4 of a 50 lb bag on the entire floor of the coop (except for where the nesting boxes are), and no rice hulls. The girls were oh so curious to see what fancy remodel was happening in their home sweet home... bedroom curtains? Master dirt bath? Until ... they stepped foot in the stuff. AAAGH! It was quite a scene. I've never seen them so freaked out. The good thing is that they immediately jumped up onto the roosting bar to get their toes out of it, but the bad news is that they seem to hate it. And I'm worried they will be discouraged from laying upstairs in their nesting boxes, or even going to bed at all.
Has anyone experienced this? I am hopeful that, due to their instinct to avoid death at nightfall, they will be forced to suck it up and walk in the sand barefoot.
Also, could I have put too much of this stuff down? ( 3" deep) . I really don't want to add a layer of rice hulls or hay, because I'd be back where I started. I know there is someone out there in this thread who has an answer for me - a solution - or at least some good ol' fashioned encouragement?
And lastly, I was planning on putting the PDZ in my brooder, but chickened out (Funny ha, ha) for fear of my babies eating too much of this stuff. I didn't read enough threads from anyone who tried it with their chicks and then saw them live a long healthy life afterwards. Is the jury still out? I did put it in my rabbit litter box though. Maybe I can sprinkle the stuff in the bottom of my trash cans too! And my 10 yo's backpack!
Thanks for your amazing support - what an AWESOME community to be part of. I have spent many many hours on this site over the last 4 years of chickenhood.
Onward! BTW - LOVE the photos of all the coops.
I have an open box about a foot deep and tall and 2.5 wide. It is suspended under the poop tray, and is a darkish corner. That one box works with 12 hens. I have a second bantam sized box, and then one open bin. They almost always lay in the big box.
