using sand in your coops

r00stercogburn

In the Brooder
9 Years
May 20, 2010
28
6
22
atlanta
I am setting up my first coop and I love the river sand idea for the chicken coop.
Does anyone know if you can use quartz sand in your coop instead of river sand ? If you can, is one better than the other?
thanks!
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We put down about a 4 inch layer of sand in the run. There are several advantages to thiis. First it provides grit. Second they love to bathe in it and prefer it to the black dirt in my garden. Third is that it makes cleaning the run a snap. Raking is so easy. It provides absorbancy for the moisture and I never have a mucky run. About every six months or so I buy enough to put about an inch down to replace what has disappeared. I just used regular clean sand from Lowe's or Home Depot.
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I use sand in both my coop and my runs because I like to pick up droppings daily. The sand coats and dries out the poo and makes it very easy to scoop up with a kitty litter scoop or one of these things:

http://www.petco.com/product/11627/...-8381-DE11-B7F3-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA

It takes me about 10 or 15 minutes a day to tidy up.

Sand doesn't retain moisture, which helps avoid smell. And our chickens love to scratch and dustbathe in the sand.
 
I had problems with my run getting wet from rain run off and just added about an inch of sand to the floor of the run and it has cut down on flies, smell, muck - so far I really like it. Going to get a few more bags to make it a little thicker layer. I agree it makes it much easier to rake and scoop than just a dirt floor.
 
Quote:
Grains of sand usually aren't large or coarse enough to serve the function of grit. Compare it to what you get when you buy a bag of poultry grit and you'll see what I mean. If your chickens are free ranging they can sometimes find what they need out in the yard, but to be sure, I offer my flock commerical grit, which is composed of granite chips.


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