Smell free & easy to clean run floor

[morgannn]

...

keep a part of the run roof open for rain (with chicken wire or something over it though!)
[/quote
Wish I could! The run is underneath an existing playhouse and we just enclosed it with chicken wire. Would have done hardware wire but it was too expensive and we already have a ton of chicken wire

 

[morgannn]

How often would you have to replace shavings if I did the DLM? I know with their brooder I had to replace about once a week or it would get super gross, but I didn't do DLM. I just replaced and added a few inches but it would get stinky really quickly, but maybe that was because it was such a smaller place.

 

[junebuggena]

DLM on bare ground, you may never really need to clean it out completely. It's the microbes in the soil that are needed for the composting action. And the litter needs to be deep. Like really thick, at least a foot or two of bedding. Each time you add a new layer, every couple weeks, you take a pitch fork and turn everything over.
I find bare ground to be the easiest thing, as long as there aren't too many birds in the run. But for that, space is needed. More than just the standard 10 sq ft per bird. Just hose it down to dissolve the really nasty poos every now and then.

 

[SoCal-ludic]

I have an outside run which is about 5 X 12 which leads to a compost bin at the end of it, which is 34" square. I put two new bails of straw in the middle of the area. The first bail I cut the string open, but did not spread the hay.
I have 10 young pullets who completely peeked and scratch their way though the first bail of hay to make a nice 2 or 3 " covering over the entire area. Within in a few weeks the second bail was broken down by the chickens. Occasionally I toss the hay into a big pile which the chickens love to spread about again. I do add a little PEZ and the area looks and smells great.

 

[caj1985]

Dry is good. Wet is BAAAD! Any chicken pen that stays wet will smell and attract flies. Any kind of organic matter thrown into the pen on top of the dirt will help keep the smell down. Grass clippings after you mow, raked leaves in the fall, pine straw, hay bales, etc. Just make sure that the hay or straw isn't moldy. I found that the recommended shavings were actually one of the less effective methods. The pine pellets that are used for horse stalls work wonders. They will keep everything dry and break down into a sawdust consistency over time which the chickens love to bathe in. It also composts much better than the pine shavings.

In my actual houses the combination of pine pellet bedding and PDZ (as suggested by an earlier reader) would keep my houses dry enough that even in the ones where I couldn't do deep litter method I only changed out the litter about twice a year. (Of course, that is going to depend upon the density of the birds. Overcrowding will make any house smell.) The removed litter composts and makes great addition to gardens in fall and spring. You can put the sawdust consistency around trees and shrubs and it adds fertilizer and looks like mulch. It won't blow away like shavings do.

 

[FridayYet]

Sand you'll have to scoop and clean fairly often.

I've never cleaned out my run, I just toss in more organic matter every so often. Love it!

 

[tjparker60]

I'm new here so could someone tell what DLM is please?

 

[lazy gardener]

deep litter management. It's best accomplished using more natural materials, like dry leaves, grass clippings, garden debris, etc. Ideal DL builds up in the coop, and perhaps NEVER needs to be cleaned out, because it composts. You simply keep adding to it and remove some if it gets too deep. It requires a floor and walls that are not prone to rot, and works best in a coop with a floor that is bare earth. If I were building a stick build coop for DLM, I think I'd use cinder block base, build my wood frame on top of that, and run a skirt around the outside of the cinder blocks. The blocks would keep the framing away from ground and DL contact. I've not been able to perfect DL in my wood floor coop, but have a wonderful system in my earth floor cattle panel coop. Bee Kissed is the queen of DLM.