Sand in coop. Need opinions

[Wise Woman]

I always use bagged shavings, and find that the local feed stores have a better product that TSC, and for a better price. Call around!
Daily poop scooping when using sand sounds like way too much trouble, especially in winter!!! Maybe with four chickens, but with 45? No way!!! Mary

Exactly! I had about 18 chickens at the time and they did not dust bath in the sand as I thought they would. but they did seem to enjoy pooping all over it. It was a constant struggle keeping it even half way clean. I can only assume that people who love sand either have very few chickens or do not mind the work and the smell of the daily poop scoop routine. In my experience, it essentially turned the coop into one very large litter box. Plus it smells. Which is something I do not have when using pine shavings. Cleaning that sand out constantly was not my idea of fun. I am not sure why it is touted as being so fabulous????

And I still have to wonder if the addition of sand to the coop had anything to do with the death of my chickens. I have never had so many deaths of young chickens so close together for no apparent reason before in almost 20 years of chicken keeping. While I cannot prove anything, it does seem suspicious that I add sand and then chickens start dropping like flies. It was very upsetting and I blame myself for listening to all the sand propaganda.

 

[GinaNew York]

here's my update - we have a 3x3 secton of sand by pop door - it gets full of shavings, has lots of poop we sift AND the chickens love to dust bathe in it - this sand was in our garage inside sandbags (for flooding) for over 11 years, and was the construction sand with pieces of shell. I sifted through it with my hands to see if I found anything in it when we opened the bags but nothing but sand and shell pieces -