small pebbles as flooring

[AshleyinItaly]

Hello! I am new to this forum and 100% new to the world of raising chickens for the purpose of eggs. We live in Italy right now and I speak very little Italian so getting things from the hardware store is quite the chore I recently bought some small smooth river rocks to put on the floor of our chicken coop, thinking I had read somewhere that was the stuff to use. BUt now that I am home after buying it I can only find people saying they use sand and tree shavings. Is it okay to use small stones? Our coop currently has slatted wooden floors with large gaps between the stone that I have filled in with pebbles. I was planning to put these even smaller little stones on top. It rains a lot here so I need something with good drainage, however, the coop will be right next to our huge garden and I'd love to be able to use the chicken waste as fertilizer which I know I can't do with the stones. HOw do you harvest chicken waste for the purpose of fertilizer? I don't even know what chicken waste looks like, if it's wet or dry..?? I'd appreciate any help that you have to offer!

Thanks,
Ashley

 

[Ullie]

Welcome to BYC and congratulations on getting some chickens.
I think that is a great idea. I also put in deep sections of stone dust/screening in my run so the chickens would have some dry areas. If you look up 'poop' in the BYC search they have some topics and photos that cover this and you'll see what chicken poop both healthy and unhealthy look like.

Have Fun!

 

[coffeekittie]

Using stones I think will prevent you from collecting poo to compost for your garden (DON'T use it fresh! You'll burn your plants!), but will work really well for drainage. You could try putting shaving or sawdust in one area - perhaps the coop? And you can collect that to compost.