Soil in the run stinks!!

[KnitswithChickens]

From what I've read, it's something to do with light refraction. Since the water in the baggies makes the light bend, it confuses the flies who have 2 complex eyes and within these eyes 3,000 to 6,000 simple eyes. The flies base their sense of direction on where the sunlight is coming from. When the flies complex eyes see refracted light through the bag of water it's enough to confuse them and they fly away.

 

[Coos NH]

anyone have any feedback on their results with spreading the dolomite lime in their runs? I would really like to know if this works. I have a covered run with relativly dry dirt, maybe a little more like clay and this year for the first time I have an odor. Wanting to know if the lime will help.

Thanks.

 

[thecoopbuilder]

I am still new with the coop thing, but a customer of mine said they use cut grass or hay to absorb the bold like a kitty litter box, but you will need to clean it every week or two and re apply the hay and grass again.

 

[Tigertrea]

Baggies of water help sometimes. We used to camp a lot. Flies were always awful at some places. I used the water baggies a few times. Only once did it work. Mostly though the flies landed on the baggies. Maybe we just had smart flies LOL.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

How do the baggies of water help? Thanks!

Just like my magic pebble that wards off man eating lions.

 

[Egghead_Jr]

When flies show up inside or inside a screen porch those hanging fly stickies aren't as pretty as spectrum producing bags of water (my lawd?!?) but work oh so well. I hear all the time that water balloons are flies kryptonite but then I don't believe in Superman either.

 

[Rock Home Isle]

The description of the OPs run was the way we kept chickens for many many years...ducks too.There is a better friendlier way to keep these animals.

Fill the run with leaf litter and let the chickens turn it each day as they scratch around the yard...the leaf litter will turn to a compost and the very strong disagreable smells will go away. Once a year you can clean out the run and you will get the most wonderful earthy smelling compost for your garden, your flowers...wherever you need it. In our little town every fall you will see huge orange bags of people's leaf litter packed out to the side of the road to be hauled away to the land-fill...that is not sustainable. Composting and incorporating this organic material a much better solution and is sustainable.

Lawn clippings by themselves tend to pack, heat up and create an odor...but lawn clippings mixed in with leaf litter works very well.

 

[peepsquad]

Is there a difference between dolomite lime and peletized lime? I read not to do the powdery kind cause it burns their feet. the bag said pelletized garden lime calcium and magnesium something. Will this work? I like my chickens more than most people so I dont want to hurt them, but its been raining for about 3 days, when it stops I want to use it and roof over the run so this doesn't happen again. Its mucky and smelly

 

[stone_family3]

I used DE and vanilla car freshners in the coop, I used a few bags of sand earlier on this year, but it's started to smell bad again

So I think I'm going to get a few more bags of sand and mix in the DE. Problem for us is that it's been super dry here.

 

[aggiemae]

Heavy clay soil can get stinky even without the addition of chicken poop. It's usually due to the anaerobic bacteria that naturally lives in clay. This bacteria grows rapidly whenthe clay soil is wet and even faster when it is wet and warm. Adding sand will temporarily dilute to odor but, since it actually makes to soil heavier, it will not solve the problem.

Working in a product that increases the oxygen level of the soil would be better in the long run. Aerify Plus is a lawn food I use it and there are no animal warnings on the container but I am not positive that it's safe for chickens. The company has a toll free number.

There is another product called OxyCal that's safe for use around pigs and they literally wallow in the treated mud.

http://www.rex-bac-t.com/s-28-swine-farming.aspx

I hope this information is helpful.