@gtaus What is your summer cleaning process? Any smells?
After the long winter, I clean out all my spent deep bedding and toss it into the chicken run composting system, where it turns into compost in a few months. I put fresh litter down in the coop, about 2 inches to start with in late spring, and add additional fresh thin layers maybe once a month throughout the summer into fall. Most of the time, during the spring/summer/early fall, my chickens are outside all day and only go into the coop to roost at night. So, it does not get very soiled with chicken poo - at least compared to the winter months when they don't leave the coop.
Come late fall, I might have 4-6 inches of litter in the coop. Honestly, I would not have to clean out the coop at that time in the late fall, but I do, and I start with a fresh 2 inches of litter for the winter months. Then I add a thin layer of litter throughout the winter maybe twice a month. Come spring, I usually have about 8 inches of litter in the coop.
My coop never smells. I have used wood chips, leaves, dried grass and my current favorite litter is just shredded paper that I make at home. If you have enough litter, it should easily absorb the chicken poo and prevent any bad smells. If I start to detect any urine smell at all in the coop before my twice annual cleaning, I will immediately toss down another thin layer of bedding and/or toss some chicken feed in an area that might need some scratch and peck action by the chickens. I used to periodically go into the coop and fluff up the bedding, but I have learned, for my chickens, that a handful of scratch will get the chickens to do the work for me.
I advocate for using whatever free litter a person can get. I started off with free wood chips I load up at our county landfill. That worked great. I also used dried grass, and that works too, but of course the grass breaks down much faster then wood chips. I have used leaves as liter in the coop. They work wonderful but can be a bit dusty, especially when you clean out the coop. Of course, I have also mixed all three types of litter together and that works as well.
A few years ago, I stated to use paper shreds that I make at home in the coop. That has become my favorite type of litter. It's free because I just shred all our paper, newspapers, and light food grade cardboard for the litter. It does not have any smell at all, being paper. It is much lighter in weight compared to wood chips so when I clean out the coop, my muck buckets are not nearly as heavy. Paper sheds don't get all dusty like dried leaves, or grass. Plus, I no longer haul out paper products to the recycle center because I use them as litter in the coop. Additionally, I toss the spent paper shreds litter into my chicken run compost system and turn it into usable garden compost in a few months, compared to wood chips which take many months longer to break down.
I live on a lake. Years ago, I used sand as litter in my coops because I have all the sand in the world for free outside my door. But the sand always smelled bad, needed constant cleaning, and frequently I had to shovel out the old heavy, stinky, sand and replace it with fresh sand.
I used straw for awhile, but I had to buy it a bale at a time, and straw is not cheap anymore. Like sand, I was never really happy with the straw because it did not dry up and soak up the poo. It more or less got wet, slimy, and smelly. Fresh straw smells fantastic, but after a few weeks, I had to toss it out and put in fresh straw. Straw can also get moldy, which is not a problem with the wood chips, dried leaves or grass, or paper shreds that I currently use.
I think lots of different things could be used as litter. Some just require more work than others. Free paper shreds I make at home is my current favorite resource for coop litter. As far as the chickens go, I don't think care one way or the other about the coop litter as long as their house is clean and does not smell.
When I switched over to using paper shreds as coop litter, I started a thread
Using Shredded Paper for Coop Litter - As Good As Wood Chips? which has my experience in the process of converting to using paper shreds as coop litter along with lots of good comments by other members here on the BYC community. Check out the link if it sounds interesting to you.
I know we all keep chickens in a manner that works for us. I'm OK with that. But I really don't understand the use of poop boards that need to be cleaned once or twice a week when you can use the deep bedding litter system and clean the coop out once or twice a year.
FWIW, before I built my chicken coop, I asked a number of chicken owners in my local area how they keep their chickens. What I learned is that I had to build a bigger coop to house my chickens comfortably in the winter months when they don't want to go outside. Along with that was everyone I talked to was using the deep bedding method because it was too hard to perform frequent cleaning in the winter with frozen poo. The people I talked to set up their coop with deep bedding for the winter and did not clean out the coop again until after the snow melts in the spring. So, I designed and built my coop to have 8 square feet per bird, which I believe has led to me successfully using the deep bedding method in my coop.
