Preventing Messy Feet in an Omlet Run

You have a couple of things to solve.

As others have mentioned, 7x7 is not nearly enough room for 6 adult chickens. That is a 1 meter run attached to the Pro, so your 7 feet includes the space under the Pro?

Second, the grass under the runs will not recover as fast as you need, unless you have a ton of room to move the run to, which you do not.

It's nice for chickens to roam over grass and pick at, but it's not really good to stand around, pooping on, in the same place. They will scratch and dig up the grass at it's roots. I think you'd have to move the run every day to a brand-new spot and not repeat in a month or more, depending on your climate, for the grass in a spot to recover.

I am speaking from experience, I moved my 9ft (3M) Cube coop run (also Omlet) around a really large yard for one summer and ran out of recovered ground. It was fine for four when they were small, as young pullets even, it's roughly 27 sq ft., but older not enough. In observing the hens, they perked up with every move, but had gone over and examined every inch of the new ground within a couple of hours. Then what? I also found it a pain to remove their dust bath, food, water and perches / items for interest that I added every time I moved it.

My solution was to get as big a stationary covered run as I could afford and I attached my coop tractor to it. You could also put the coop inside it, something I am considering. Put organic or trusted mulch, aged wood chips, dried leaves, good forest dirt, shavings, hemp, etc, ideally a mix of some of these, on the ground in there to keep it dry and good for their feet. When they walk through poop often the continued walking on good litter takes it off. Just today one of my hens stepped right into a big fat poop (she was getting a reminder from the lead hen, she didn't plan that I'm sure) and was wearing a poop sock as she walked away. It came off in a little while.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom