Regrets on sand in run?

[M_Struna]

I currently have a dirt run and am considering adding sand. I started with sand in the coop. My young girls had been sleeping in two of the nesting boxes until I blocked them off. Prior to doing this I just scooped the poop out of them every 1-2 days. When I pulled the sand out of the boxes to block them, apparently there was enough urine in the sand that now the coop has taken on an odor that I can’t seem to get rid of, no matter how much barn lime, Saturday lime and PDZ I add to it. The plan is to remove it all, paint the walls and do hemp bedding in the next couple weeks, whenever the weather warms a bit. That said…I am having reservations about sand in the run. It’s covered but gets some moisture in certain areas when it rains. I’m planning on doing roll up tarps and putting up clear plastic roofing panels on the corner that gets it most. I don’t care to have the same odor in the run that I’m dealing with in the coop, although it would obviously have much better ventilation. My question is, has anyone done sand, horse pellets or other material in their run under similar circumstances and then gone back to dirt?

 

[ChickyCh00k]

Depending on where you live (you can add this info to your profile), sand may not be ideal. Many people swear by it and use it in coop and run (though I've not heard of it being used in nest boxes...).

The most frequent advice you'll see for run flooring is woodchips and/or material that will degrade over time (dry leaves, grass clippings, etc.). With a covered run, the material will not degrade as quickly (if it isn't getting frequent moisture), but you can rake it once in a while to mix in the poops.

I started with sand in my covered run. I live in Michigan, so we get hot summers and cold winters and everything in between. I found the sand to be not so great - I was scooping poop multiple times/day (and at that time I only had 8 young pullets - I can't imagine what it would be like with the 20 hens I now have ). The run also started to smell not so great in a fairly short period of time, despite scooping poo multiple times/day. So I came here for advice.

Woodchips was the consensus. I have been using them ever since. I tried to get as much sand out as possible (we put about 10" in our run), but there's still several inches of it under the woodchips, which does not help with the degradation process.

If I were you, I would ditch the sand everywhere and use woodchips in the run. As for the coop, advice would depend on whether you have poop boards under the roosts or not.

Just a side note: Chickens don't "urinate", but their poo does contain urates (the white stuff on top of the poo) and ammonia, which is what you may have been smelling. With sand, it's pretty important to clean poo daily IMO.

There are many other members here who have more experience than I and I'm sure they'll have additional (possibly better) advice! Good luck! It's always a bit of trial and error with these things!

 

[M_Struna]

I am in NE Ohio, so our climate is similar to yours. As for sand in the nest boxes, we just filled the entire coop with it before we moved the pullets in since it’s all one floor. Unfortunately, they immediately took to the boxes instead of the roost bars. With the boxes blocked off they started huddling outside their favorite box but are now finally starting to roost.

See, I’m so glad you responded because I was thinking the same thing with the sand. The main reason I was leaning toward sand is that I’m quite allergic to the pine shavings I initially used in the coop. But I’m not altogether impressed with the sand. Maybe the wood chips won’t cause my allergies to flare as much since they’ll be outside. I have no aversion to cleaning poop on a regular basis, but I can’t always get to it daily. I don’t go longer than every two days, but most times I feel like that’s too long! My ten poop a lot!

You’ve helped me decide not to go with sand. I’ll give the wood chips a try and if I have problems they’ll be easy enough to remove. I’m not familiar with how to purchase. Do you buy from a retailer or get them from a local mill?

I already have the hemp for the coop. I hope I’m not allergic. We’ll see. I currently do not have a poop shelf but plan on putting one in. I live on a dairy farm and was going to lay down feed bags, as some folks have suggested, a use hemp and some PDZ on the bags. But I am very open to suggestions.

Thanks so much for your thoughtful response. It’s helped so much.

 

[ChickyCh00k]

Are your roosts higher than the nest boxes? If the roosts aren't higher than the nest boxes it will entice the chickens to sleep in them. They want to be as high as possible while roosting.

As for sourcing woodchips - I started with cypress mulch from Lowe's and/or Home Depot, then I signed up for ChipDrop, which is a service wherein arborists in your area will dump woodchips in a specified location at your home. It's technically free for this service, but I have found that if you pay $20 (which is the cost to cover the arborist's fee, the delivery tends to happen sooner - they only charge you if they make a delivery). There may also be some place near where you live that has free woodchips if you can haul them away, or other places that will deliver mulch in bulk (for a higher cost than ChipDrop, but guaranteed delivery).

I have found poop shelves to be an integral part of managing my coop cleanliness, but many people here use the deep bedding method with great success. Hemp is a good option for the floor either way, but if you install a poop shelf, the poop will be much easier to scoop if you only put PDZ on it (or PDZ and sand). Hemp is difficult to sift in my experience.

With poop shelves the floor stays virtually poop-free (unless you have them locked in the coop for long periods), and then you only need to worry about a quick poop scoop from the shelf, into a bucket, then onto a compost pile

If you're interested in using the deep bedding method, you could start a new thread asking about how to do it properly (or someone may respond to this post), or search the forum for "Deep Bedding in Coop" - you'll likely get a ton of results . I don't have any experience with that method, but LOTS of BYC members do!