stinky chicken run

[candr01]

I know this is an old thread but I am soooo glad I found it. We are brand new to keeping chickens. Our 3 chicks are about 8 weeks old, have been in their brand new, covered, 50 sq ft coop/run with PDZ and sand as litter that is getting sifted daily (often twice daily) and yet they were stinky stinky stinky creatures! I couldn't understand where the nasty smell was coming from - and so quickly!!??? Was making me crazy - what was a doing wrong? It was the feed. I was using chick crumbles from the local feed store and they were stinky. I switched to organic pullet feed this week and built a new feeder so there was less billing-out of feed and now there is no smell at all. Soooo glad to have found this thread and sooo grateful for such great advice. Thanks BYC!

 

[maryellen21]

What about the urine ? I clean my coop every two weeks and use PDZ under the coop in the sand area and it smells like urine. Even after i clean the coop and put 25lbs of PDZ in the sand area a few days later i smell urine. Not poop but urine smell. I use hay and pine shavings and PDZ inside the coop . Their run gets fresh dirt and i shovel out as much of old dirt as i can. They have a huge area to free range but they are only 16 weeks old so while we are at work they are locked in their coop/dirt run area. Can i let them have free roam while we are at work at this age?

 

[kmalichky]

We just got into raising chickens this spring. My husband bought me a small coop to start with and this has worked well when they were little. We added on a 12ft by 8ft run and are now working on a larger attached coop with nesting boxes. My problem is that the run is not covered and the grass is now gone. It's on an incline and when we get rain, it's a slippery poopy mess. They free-range outside the pen now, but they still stay pretty close. What can I do to keep the run cleaner. Can't really use wood chips since that makes for a horrible clean up when it rains.