The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Leahs Mom]

I have a question that's probably been covered, but I couldn't find it with a cursory search and I'm feeling too lazy today to dig any further. So please forgive me and love me anyway.

I want to use deep litter method, but my coop has a linoleum floor. Is there any chance that will work? What techniques or practices will help me to be successful?

Thank you for your wisdom, insight, and tolerance.

@hoosiercheetah
I have the same situation and I do like sally said. I start out with about an inch of dirt just dug up from the garden. Then I start putting the pine chips on top of that.


Last winter I had put some bagged peat moss in a couple times in a small area and I LOVE the way that does in the litter. Found that out quite by mistake as I was using it for a different purpose but I think I'll add a little peat moss every now and then too.


AND HERE IS THE EXCITING THING....

Even though I don't have a dirt floor in the coop, I do have the outdoor run. I didn't want it to become compacted and unhealthy after the grass was gone so I started a deep litter out there. Started out with wood chips from some trees we had cut down. I had the tree service put them in a pile at the back of the property and they had cured about 6 mos before I started using them. In the summer they're full of red worms naturally...the kiddos love digging through them.

Anyhow, I started putting those in (just a big pile - the kiddos will spread them all out and it gives them something to do).


LAST YEAR'S EXPERIMENT
Then...last year's experiment has turned out some wonderful composted soil for the garden. .

Whenever the litter gets on the deep side in the coop, I just toss it out the door into the outdoor run. (Always leaving some inside to start new litter there.) Since my run is large, I sometimes set a wheel barrow just outside the pop door and shovel it into the wheel barrow and wheel it around the back side so it's not all in one place.

I was hoping that over the coarse of the winter it would compost into a nice, rich soil that I could use in the garden. And it did! I have the most beautiful broken-down soil under there. My daughter came and dug out a pick-up load full to take to her gardens and we're going to dig some more out for ours and continue to mulch and dump the deep litter back into the run from the chicken house and do it all over again.

Some people actually more their chicken house and plant the garden right there. It won't work that way for me.


So...
I get good, healthy litter for the chickens to live, scratch, find bugs, etc on in the outdoor run - AS OPPOSED TO A COMPACTED, SICK, DISEASE-VECTOR that is so prevalent in chicken yards everywhere

AND

I get wonderful composted, healthy soil for the gardens.

WIN WIN

PS: I found in our area that if you contact tree services many of them will drop off loads of chipped wood free if they're working in your area as they prefer to not have to deal with it. You can just let it sit a while to "cure"...I take my cue that it's ready if there are worms living in it.

 

[Leahs Mom]

OH... and I've not put any real food-type compost in there .... unless I was feeding the kiddos something and they left a little. But they did decimate my compost pile - which they also had access to last year - down to flat earth.

 

[heartsizedfarm]

OH... and I've not put any real food-type compost in there .... unless I was feeding the kiddos something and they left a little.  But they did decimate my compost pile - which they also had access to last year - down to flat earth. 

Last winter the lane to the big horse manure dumping spot out in the field got drifted over, so we created a closer pile for the horses where it could be harrowed in spring. But what to do with the sheep pen and chicken coop pickings which I used to add to the manure dumpster?

I decided just to dump them handy for me behind my husband's BBQ hut and as the pile got higher and higher he got crosser and crosser, saying what a chore it was going to be to haul away in springtime. But since the chickens play in there every day it is just vanishing! And I've found it so useful to have it close to fill up gardening containers with the rough stuff, then a few inches of topsoil on top. I may have to do this every year. Ha!

 

[LindaB220]

@hoosiercheetah
I have the same situation and I do like sally said. I start out with about an inch of dirt just dug up from the garden. Then I start putting the pine chips on top of that.


Last winter I had put some bagged peat moss in a couple times in a small area and I LOVE the way that does in the litter. Found that out quite by mistake as I was using it for a different purpose but I think I'll add a little peat moss every now and then too.


AND HERE IS THE EXCITING THING....

Even though I don't have a dirt floor in the coop, I do have the outdoor run. I didn't want it to become compacted and unhealthy after the grass was gone so I started a deep litter out there. Started out with wood chips from some trees we had cut down. I had the tree service put them in a pile at the back of the property and they had cured about 6 mos before I started using them. In the summer they're full of red worms naturally...the kiddos love digging through them.

Anyhow, I started putting those in (just a big pile - the kiddos will spread them all out and it gives them something to do).


LAST YEAR'S EXPERIMENT
Then...last year's experiment has turned out some wonderful composted soil for the garden. .

Whenever the litter gets on the deep side in the coop, I just toss it out the door into the outdoor run. (Always leaving some inside to start new litter there.) Since my run is large, I sometimes set a wheel barrow just outside the pop door and shovel it into the wheel barrow and wheel it around the back side so it's not all in one place.

I was hoping that over the coarse of the winter it would compost into a nice, rich soil that I could use in the garden. And it did! I have the most beautiful broken-down soil under there. My daughter came and dug out a pick-up load full to take to her gardens and we're going to dig some more out for ours and continue to mulch and dump the deep litter back into the run from the chicken house and do it all over again.

Some people actually more their chicken house and plant the garden right there. It won't work that way for me.


So...
I get good, healthy litter for the chickens to live, scratch, find bugs, etc on in the outdoor run - AS OPPOSED TO A COMPACTED, SICK, DISEASE-VECTOR that is so prevalent in chicken yards everywhere

AND

I get wonderful composted, healthy soil for the gardens.

WIN WIN

PS: I found in our area that if you contact tree services many of them will drop off loads of chipped wood free if they're working in your area as they prefer to not have to deal with it. You can just let it sit a while to "cure"...I take my cue that it's ready if there are worms living in it.

Wonderful post Leah. That's what this is all about.

 

[SallyinIndiana]

@hoosiercheetah
I have the same situation and I do like sally said. I start out with about an inch of dirt just dug up from the garden. Then I start putting the pine chips on top of that.


Last winter I had put some bagged peat moss in a couple times in a small area and I LOVE the way that does in the litter. Found that out quite by mistake as I was using it for a different purpose but I think I'll add a little peat moss every now and then too.


AND HERE IS THE EXCITING THING....

Even though I don't have a dirt floor in the coop, I do have the outdoor run. I didn't want it to become compacted and unhealthy after the grass was gone so I started a deep litter out there. Started out with wood chips from some trees we had cut down. I had the tree service put them in a pile at the back of the property and they had cured about 6 mos before I started using them. In the summer they're full of red worms naturally...the kiddos love digging through them.

Anyhow, I started putting those in (just a big pile - the kiddos will spread them all out and it gives them something to do).


LAST YEAR'S EXPERIMENT
Then...last year's experiment has turned out some wonderful composted soil for the garden. .

Whenever the litter gets on the deep side in the coop, I just toss it out the door into the outdoor run. (Always leaving some inside to start new litter there.) Since my run is large, I sometimes set a wheel barrow just outside the pop door and shovel it into the wheel barrow and wheel it around the back side so it's not all in one place.

I was hoping that over the coarse of the winter it would compost into a nice, rich soil that I could use in the garden. And it did! I have the most beautiful broken-down soil under there. My daughter came and dug out a pick-up load full to take to her gardens and we're going to dig some more out for ours and continue to mulch and dump the deep litter back into the run from the chicken house and do it all over again.

Some people actually more their chicken house and plant the garden right there. It won't work that way for me.


So...
I get good, healthy litter for the chickens to live, scratch, find bugs, etc on in the outdoor run - AS OPPOSED TO A COMPACTED, SICK, DISEASE-VECTOR that is so prevalent in chicken yards everywhere

AND

I get wonderful composted, healthy soil for the gardens.

WIN WIN

PS: I found in our area that if you contact tree services many of them will drop off loads of chipped wood free if they're working in your area as they prefer to not have to deal with it. You can just let it sit a while to "cure"...I take my cue that it's ready if there are worms living in it.

We did like she suggested above. As the grass died out in our run that had the ducks in it, we dumped the winter litter right out there in the run and added tree trimmings. Then when the mud came from the week - 10 days of rain, we dumped out more pine chips and more. Right now the grass in the run is gone due to the ducks but the ground is not compacted or muddy. Then because of all of the good things that people were saying about sand, when we emptied our pool ball of 250 pounds of sand, we put it around the duck kiddie pool. The ducks and the chickens have already had a blast scratching it around and spreading it out. It will be covered by the pine trimmings soon enough. And it really was not much just over 1 wheel barrel.
We started the deep litter in our newest run too but right now it is just around the fence line and in the lowest corner. As the grass dies out, more wood chips and tree trimmings will go there. But I'm hoping to avoid changing out the litter till next spring.

 

[Leahs Mom]

@SallyinIndiana

When I first started doing the chipping, that was all I put in there for about 1 1/3 of a year. I never removed anything from the outside. It was just last summer that I decided to dump the indoor litter out there too - which is a smaller shaving, of course. So now it gets both.

But I intentionally didn't add more of the larger chips during this winter and only the smaller stuff from the hen house. So it was nice and broken down over the winter months but I still could have let it go without removing any until I was ready and kept putting more on top.

 

[flyladyrocks]

@hoosiercheetah
I have the same situation and I do like sally said. I start out with about an inch of dirt just dug up from the garden. Then I start putting the pine chips on top of that.


Last winter I had put some bagged peat moss in a couple times in a small area and I LOVE the way that does in the litter. Found that out quite by mistake as I was using it for a different purpose but I think I'll add a little peat moss every now and then too.


AND HERE IS THE EXCITING THING....

Even though I don't have a dirt floor in the coop, I do have the outdoor run. I didn't want it to become compacted and unhealthy after the grass was gone so I started a deep litter out there. Started out with wood chips from some trees we had cut down. I had the tree service put them in a pile at the back of the property and they had cured about 6 mos before I started using them. In the summer they're full of red worms naturally...the kiddos love digging through them.

Anyhow, I started putting those in (just a big pile - the kiddos will spread them all out and it gives them something to do).


LAST YEAR'S EXPERIMENT
Then...last year's experiment has turned out some wonderful composted soil for the garden. .

Whenever the litter gets on the deep side in the coop, I just toss it out the door into the outdoor run. (Always leaving some inside to start new litter there.) Since my run is large, I sometimes set a wheel barrow just outside the pop door and shovel it into the wheel barrow and wheel it around the back side so it's not all in one place.

I was hoping that over the coarse of the winter it would compost into a nice, rich soil that I could use in the garden. And it did! I have the most beautiful broken-down soil under there. My daughter came and dug out a pick-up load full to take to her gardens and we're going to dig some more out for ours and continue to mulch and dump the deep litter back into the run from the chicken house and do it all over again.

Some people actually more their chicken house and plant the garden right there. It won't work that way for me.


So...
I get good, healthy litter for the chickens to live, scratch, find bugs, etc on in the outdoor run - AS OPPOSED TO A COMPACTED, SICK, DISEASE-VECTOR that is so prevalent in chicken yards everywhere

AND

I get wonderful composted, healthy soil for the gardens.

WIN WIN

PS: I found in our area that if you contact tree services many of them will drop off loads of chipped wood free if they're working in your area as they prefer to not have to deal with it. You can just let it sit a while to "cure"...I take my cue that it's ready if there are worms living in it.

 

[Leahs Mom]

@flyladyrocks

If you're starting a new run I just let them use the grass that's already there until it starts to get used up. Then I started dumping the chips in.

But if your run doesn't have any grass already, you can do it right away.

 

[hoosiercheetah]

I was thinking about asking if I could throw some peat in there too! I'm going to get a couple bales, one for a flower bed I'm resurrecting, and one to make a dust bath. I'll just scatter some in the coop with whatever isn't too nasty from the compost bin, top it with some fresh pine shavings, and rock on with my bad self. I'm also planning on throwing used litter in the run once the grass is gone; I think you mentioned that to me before.

Thank you thank you for the very informative post! It was a huge help!

 

[flyladyrocks]

@flyladyrocks

If you're starting a new run I just let them use the grass that's already there until it starts to get used up. Then I started dumping the chips in.

But if your run doesn't have any grass already, you can do it right away.