urgent help needed

[Kim the chicken girl]

Hi all Kim here. Im from Australia and new to chickens. My husband has almost finished building me a permanent chicken penn. But im stuck what base should i use for the run floor? I have concrete where the nesting boxes and perches will be could you please help and suggest a flooring base etc and youf reasons as to why? I have spent countless hours researching and have come up with either soil or sand. I havd bern to our local nurseries and they only srll concrete sand or fine sand which going off google are both no good. Please help.......

 

[Arya28]

Hi and !

The floor in our barn is concrete, and we use pine shavings over top of that for their bedding. We use hay sometimes, but mostly pine shavings. This is because they are warm, and pretty soft. The concrete was in there, so it's what we have to work with. I wouldn't recommend just concrete with nothing over top, but if you add stuff over it (such as pine shavings or whatever else you want to use for that) it would probably work. We even have sand over concrete under the pine shavings in some places, as they like to dust bathe in it and it keeps moisture from the concrete. However, I'm sure you will get lots of more good opinions on here!

 

[ChickNanny13]

Glad to have you join us

I couldn't decide between DLM or sand, my ground is hard clay dirt. It was recommended for me to go DLM & glad I did. I keep adding shavings as needed, decided against sand when I was reminded of our humid/wet weather, shavings can be added to compost/garden. Sand gets heavy when wet but can also be washed & dried. Others will join in with their preferences/advice.

Have you read about the "poop board & PDZ" ? It really makes for easy cleaning & maintenance.

 

[Arya28]

Glad to have you join us

I couldn't decide between DLM or sand, my ground is hard clay dirt. It was recommended for me to go DLM & glad I did. I keep adding shavings as needed, decided against sand when I was reminded of our humid/wet weather, shavings can be added to compost/garden. Sand gets heavy when wet but can also be washed & dried. Others will join in with their preferences/advice.

Have you read about the "poop board & PDZ" ? It really makes for easy cleaning & maintenance.

Do you have your chickens in a barn? Because we wanted to do the DLM, and now we aren't sure if we should, because we don't want the compost from it to get too hot and burn the barn down! Are we being paranoid or is that a concern? Lol

 

[ChickNanny13]

@Arya28
No, I have an "open air" enclosure....I wanted good ventilation cause it does get warm & humid here, yet needed rain protection (shower curtains on EMT rods)....Hubby came up with this and it's working out great!

 

[Arya28]

Oh ok! Thanks!

I forgot about your climate. I guess if you are in Hawaii you wouldn't need to worry about keeping them warm in the winter! That looks like a great chicken paradise

Something like that looks like it might work for a summer coop idea here though!

 

[Howard E]

For fixed coops, the historic, ideal A#1 floor for a chicken house is concrete. Easy to keep clean, if built correctly, is dry, and will prevent diggers from getting in and that includes rats and mice. If they are living in there, it has to be inside the litter.

Deep litter will also work with cement. Birds also use it as a heat sink in really hot weather.

Similar to cement would be concrete paving stones. Bed those on sand and pack them in tight and they will be good too. And those can be taken up if you want to move things.

Deep litter may "compost", but is rarely going to get even warm, let alone hot enough to burn anything down.