Sand All The Way!!!

[hens4]

We have had chickens since about april and have been through a vast learning curve with regards to what to put in there run, we had just the soil..No Good at all, when it rained was like a mud bath, we then tried putting gravel down, great at first but then as i hosed it down over a matter of months the hens poop wasnt wshing away great and smelled. So then we decided Sharp Sand from the buiders yard.

We dug out all the soil and got a huge builders bag of sand (1 ton i think) and poured the whole lot in the run..its been Amazing!!!! so much better, and cleaner.
All i do while they are having there hour free running in the garden is lightly rake the top and put in the bin. takes 1 minute to do. Fantastic.

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[2eggsfried]

good to hear.

My husband and I are slowly building our new coop and plan to use sand in our run, as well as the coop for the same reason. I also read using sweet PDZ mixed with the builder sand helps with smell and clean up too. thanks for sharing

 

[hens4]

Ive never heard of the PDZ MIx, what is that? but great news your using sand...

 

[2eggsfried]

You find it at the co-op, it's used in horse bedding, it helps keep fly's and smell down, from what I've read on here. I've started using it yet as we've just got started on our coop. and between the rain here in East TN and only having weekends to do all our chores and build the coop, it's gonna take a while

. Anyway, do a search on here and you'll find it. good luck