Sand as litter?

[Folly's place]

Sorry, I just started laughing here. Sand from the chicken coop in my oven?!?
Never going to happen!
In freezing weather sand would be miserable, and with more than a very few birds likewise. I do love hearing about the methods needed to keep a sand base reasonable. Like having another big kitty litter pan.
Mary

 

[gocgo]

I've had my 4 young chickens for 5 days now. About 6-7 weeks old. I have a small TS coop with a metal pull out tray for cleaning poop. I laid down pine shaving as litter and insulation against the cold metal. I'm realising I cant pull the tray out to scoop because the flakes are too deep so I end up bending and leaning inside to scoop. I'm thi king about switching to sand. I bought a 50 lb bag of natural sand from home depot to make up a dust bath for the winter months but discovered it is quite wet. How do you use sand as litter? It can't be wet and i cant see how to dry 50lbs of the stuff. I don't have a garage or basement to dry it in but don't really want to dry it in my livingroom or kitchen. Advice?

I use sand in mine, but get the tube of sand that is used to give additional weight to pickup trucks in the winter. It is dry, has more grit in it, and is generally cheaper. It comes in a 70lb tube for less than $5. I have a cat litter scoop that I use to remove poo and it works great. Sand also will hold heat longer than wood chips.

 

[DeeAnn5]

@DeeAnn5 Do you have a pic of your coop and/or tractor?

 

[DeeAnn5]

mom

I do have a kitty litter box I use for their dust baths. It has sand, soil, and wood ash. Because it has to sit out in the run rather than under shelter I bring it indoors every evening so it doesnt fill with snow or water and freeze. It warms it up to room temperature too. 2 of the gals and the 1 roo (surprise!) all roost now. The third gal, my little Repecca, cant roost on her own because she's pigeon toed and possibly has a vision problem. Naturally shes my favorite, don't tell the others. After everyone goes into the shelter at night I find her under the others so I pick her up and set her on the roost. If I didn't do that she'd be a poopcicle by morning. In the morning after I open the pop door and the others come out I open the clean out door and take her off the roost to join the others. Ramps aren't her favorite either. I'm concerned she will injure a foot getting off the roost, more like falling off the roost truthfully. I am a retired nurse who worked with severely special needs children and a quadriplegic client. I don't mind working with a special needs chicken. She's so sweet and follows me all around the run.

Oh you are the perfect mom for her! Mine were adult when I got this flock and in just a few weeks they have started following me around. What are we, the Pied pipers? ; )

 

[Hopperkiller]

View attachment 1194706 Front view. 10ft x 10ft x 6ft chain link dog run. I'm still tworking on the fencing especially the door as it has gaps.View attachment 1194708 The top is 1inch x 2inch x 2ft x12ft wire strips, 6 of them I wired together.View attachment 1194718 The entire thing is wrapped with 1inch x 2inch x 2ft wire on the top 2 feet while the bottom 4 feet is wrapped in 1/2inch hardware cloth.View attachment 1194723 The apron is around the run AND the coop has its own apron which you cannotsee because we buried View attachment 1194725 South/right side shows scrap plastic siding from an old hot tub covering the View attachment 1194726 bottom of the coops attached run. North side, bottom covered only under hen house. Another view.View attachment 1194728View attachment 1194730 East side, nesting door and the covering. This covering was all done to prevent rain making the feeding area wet. View attachment 1194736 I blocked access to that covered area under the hen house because they go there instead of in the roosting area of hen house. View attachment 1194739 The clean out door with pull out tray below it. Wood strips are blocking drafts from gaps. Did the same thing insde nesting door. View attachment 1194741 Looking into clean out door. They prefer to sit in shavings over sitting on roosts. View attachment 1194743 Blocking the nesting area to prevent starting bad habits of kpooping in there. I'll open it when they get to the age of laying eggs.View attachment 1194747 The one good thing on this coop...the vent at the top which you see here as a bit of light. View attachment 1194748 The vent as seen from the outside.

Can you raise the roost just above nest hieght. Young chicks i have dealt with take a while to use the roost but those seem too low to serve as a roost.

 

[Jennifer Cappi Williams]

Just saw this, my biddies are in the bathroom in a big bunny hutch and I just decided to use chick grit as litter instead of constantly changing the paper, which is used horse feed bags (the paper kind). Seems OK at the moment and they like the grit.

 

[Cryss]

Can you raise the roost just above nest hieght. Young chicks i have dealt with take a while to use the roost but those seem too low to serve as a roost.

Actually I did.

View attachment 1202385

 

[chickenmeadow]

Sorry, I just started laughing here. Sand from the chicken coop in my oven?!?
Never going to happen!
In freezing weather sand would be miserable, and with more than a very few birds likewise. I do love hearing about the methods needed to keep a sand base reasonable. Like having another big kitty litter pan.
Mary

Hi Mary. Now you've got me laughing, sorry if my comment seemed different than I meant it. Sand from the chicken coop would not be cool, but wet sand for the chicken coop wouldn't be too bad in the oven to dry it. Just trying to address the concern someone had about wet sand, just in case they were desperate. The 1st batch of sand that I put in my sand trays was a little damp, so just put out a thin layer in trays to dry & added another thin layer ...... til it was deep enough. Thanks for the laughs, take care.

 

[Folly's place]

So glad you cleared that up. It is funny, though...
Mary

 

[The Farmers' Daughter]

I have sand in my poop tray. Even at -40 I haven't had problems with it freezing. I add just a little bit of zeolite which helped dry out the sand beautifully. My extra sand is another story. Frozen solid, so I can't top up the poop tray with more sand for a while.
Zeolite is something you can get at garden centres (not somewhere like home depot or Lowe's, but a nursery) or some places that carry landscaping rock might have it. In the US it's really easy to find. It's sold as sweet pdz.