As someone who had decided to use sand in the run, I researched sand EXTENSIVELY, and finally bought some for my chicken coop/run.
Here is what I found:
1) No bagged sand is coarse enough. They all have tons of super-fine particles, which can give your chickens respiratory problems. So anything you find at Lowes, Home Depot,
Tractor Supply, etc. is going to be super-dusty and not the right sand.
2) You need to contact a local quarry (most states have a quarry somewhere!) and get **washed** sand that is coarse. You need to get the sieve results of the sand. You want to get sand that consists of mostly coarse particles. What are coarse particles? 1 mm and above. Anything under 1 mm needs to be as scarce as possible. No sand will be completely dust-free, but you need to aim for sand with as few particles under 1 mm as possible.
For example, I just bought the following sand:
https://genevarock.com/product/sand-washed-concrete-2/
At the bottom of the picture are the Sieve Results. As you can see, the sand consists mostly of particles that are least 1 mm. Only 50% of the particles they tested with the various sizes of sieve were .600 mm, and almost none of the super-fine stuff (.300 mm and below) got through the sieve that was that size. That means the sand has a low dust content (for sand).
Sure enough, when I got the sand, it was coarse, and not dusty. By comparison, I had bought Quickrete bagged sand at the same time for another project, and those were so dusty, when I cut them open, the dust flew everywhere. Meanwhile, my DH and I were shoveling and flinging the coarse stuff into the run we're making, and there was no dust at all.
I hope this helps! (I really want to do an article about sand. I haven't found this information on the internet at all and the sieve results are so important!).
