Using Shredded Paper for Coop Litter - As Good As Wood Chips?

[gtaus]

I use shredded paper in the nest boxes. I was having a broken egg problem and paper was much more absorbent than anything else.
So far I have only shredded that brown packing type paper not office paper.
When it gets soiled I just dump it out on the floor if the coop. From there it makes its way to the run and just disappears along with everything else as it composts down.
Works great.

I tried using paper shreds in my nest boxes. But I found that shreds of paper would stick to the freshly laid wet egg shells and then they would have to be removed by hand. So, I still use pine shavings in the nest boxes because the shavings don't stick to a wet egg shell. I imagine if I just used the light cardboard from cereal boxes, then those shreds probably would not stick to the fresh eggs.

The one big advantage to using those paper shreds are indeed how fast they compost down in comparison to wood chips or even wood shavings. When I toss some paper shreds out into the compost chicken run system, I just cover them with a bit of grass clippings and the shreds are basically gone within days. If it's really dry outside at that time, I might set the sprinkler on that area to speed up the composting.

I shred all kinds of paper products, so my shred mix is very colorful. I'm OK with all the colored shreds in my coop, but I really don't like the look of colored paper shreds outside. That is why I cover them.

 

[gtaus]

I use a 16-sheet shredder that I got from Costco and rip the boxes into strips that will fit into the shredder.

My 12 sheet shredder will overload if I try to run full width heavy cardboard into the slot. So I have to cut my heavy cardboard down to about 2 inch wide strips and feed them through the credit card slot in the middle of the shredder. Can you use full width (8 inch wide) heavy cardboard in your 16 sheet shredder of do you have to break the cardboard down into credit card width strips?

 

[Sally PB]

I would encourage you to try a small pile of paper shreds and see if it works for you or not. Again, I think my mix of also using light cardboard in the shreds is maybe why I don't see any matting of my paper shred litter.

I have a 12 sheet shredder (say that 5 times fast!). I'm going to give this a try. I just made a recycling run a couple weeks ago, so I may have to "save up" some stuff to get a meaningful pile of box board to work with. The shredder is just about full of office paper type stuff from shredding old bank statements.

I'll let you know how it goes.

 

[gtaus]

I have a 12 sheet shredder (say that 5 times fast!). I'm going to give this a try. I just made a recycling run a couple weeks ago, so I may have to "save up" some stuff to get a meaningful pile of box board to work with. The shredder is just about full of office paper type stuff from shredding old bank statements.

I'll let you know how it goes.

The older I get, the more upset I get with myself for throwing stuff away without thinking if there might be a better option than the landfill.

Years ago, I would rake up all my leaves, bag them, and haul them to the landfill. Then I started to compost the leaves in my pallet bins and eventually use that leaf compost in the garden. But now, with chickens, I just dump all my leaves in the chicken run compost system and let the chickens break down the leaves into compost much faster. I'll save a few bags of dried leaves in case I need more litter for the coop in the winter.

We used to take all our tree debris from yard cleanup after a storm, or just normal prunning of branches, and load up the pickup and haul everything to the landfill. Maybe make a big burn pile of tree parts and set it on fire and just burn everything down. Since I got my chickens, I now chip up all the smaller branches and use the wood chips in my chicken coop or the chicken run. The thicker branches and tree trunks will get cut up to size and I will use them in a hügelkultur raised garden bed.

Dear Wife and I used to have maybe 4-5 bags full of household garbage to bring to the landfill every week. Most of the bulky stuff was paper products. We have a recycyle bin down the road on the way to town, so we started to separate our plastic, metal, paper, and glass. That reduced the bulk of our "garbage" leaving us fewer bags that got thrown into the dump. But now that I am shredding our paper products and using them for the chickens, and then composting the used paper shred litter, we have reduced our discarded bags for the landfill even more. Also, we keep a "chicken bucket" in the kitchen for all our kitchen scraps and leftovers to feed to the chickens. Over time, we went from about 5 bags of garbage a week down to about 1 garbage bag per week going to the dump.

Not only do I feel good about reducing our garbage we throw away, but I have found better ways to use those leaves, tree branches and parts, kitchen scraps, and now most of our paper products. I think you can see the theme that almost everything gets used in one way or another with the chickens and then, over time, ends up as compost for the garden.

I used to save up my paper products for shredding. Over time, I have started to just shred all my waste paper as it becomes available. The end result is that I don't have piles of paper or cardboard boxes laying around taking up room. Also, if you shred normal office paper, bills, etc... and then shred up some light cardboard from empty food boxes, I find I get a nice mix of paper material in the shredder bin at the start. Also, I no longer have piles of "junk paper" siting around the house to upset Dear Wife.

If my experiment with using shredded paper for the chicken coop is successful over this winter, I might do more of it in the future. If not, I'll still use the paper shreds in the chicken run and as carbon products for my pallet compost bins which I still have for overflow. There are still some foods I won't feed to the chickens, and anything moldy will get tossed in the pallet compost bins. So, I still need carbon products to balance off that stuff.

 

[Iluveggers]

You guys motivated me! I bagged up a few piles of leaves to dump in the chicken run! Good exercise & good use of resources. It was 45 today so no snow & warm enough to do some work, and actually not raining for once!

 

[avjudge]

. . . Sounds like a lot of work to separate the cardboard from the plastic. Those boxes I just recycle. But I am trying to use as much of that paper material I can. . .

I won't say it isn't a bit of extra work but with time I've figured out how to cut way down on that. We have a bathroom with shower off our mudroom so after opening out the boxes I just drop them there, printed side down, and spray them with the showerhead, then just walk away. They sit and loosen up, even more if my husband takes a shower in which case he just stands on them. Then the layers practically fall apart one from the other and I toss them over the curtain rod and forget about them for some time longer until they're dry.

My 12 sheet shredder will overload if I try to run full width heavy cardboard into the slot. So I have to cut my heavy cardboard down to about 2 inch wide strips and feed them through the credit card slot in the middle of the shredder. Can you use full width (8 inch wide) heavy cardboard in your 16 sheet shredder of do you have to break the cardboard down into credit card width strips?

Here's where I admit that I burned out my original 12-sheet copier when I started doing this! And that was trying to be careful - but I didn't go so far as to use the CC slot. My "new" shredder is a Royal 1680mc, $100 on sale at Costco maybe fall 2019, and now apparently discontinued.

I do use up to full 8"-width cardboard in the standard paper slot. I rip, I don't cut, so it's not even widths or even necessarily rectangular. (If it doesn't want to rip I'll sometimes nick it with a razor knife to start the rip. And sometime I'll stand on one part of the box as I use two hands to rip off a flap.) I try to do a small amount at once, just one box or a couple of small ones.

And while I'm ripping to width, I'll sometimes rip a layer (of thickness) off if it seems stiff. I'll do this even with the thicker Chewy boxes (they have 2 strengths, edge crush rating of 35 & 44 lbs), though I don't know if I have to do it. Just having burned out one shredder, I want this one to last!

 

[gtaus]

Here's where I admit that I burned out my original 12-sheet copier when I started doing this!

I once overloaded a paper shredder and the plastic gears for the shredder rollers actually broke. The metal teeth on the rollers are fine, but the gears were made out of plastic and could not withstand the overload.

So, I now cut my heavy box cardboard into strips that I can feed down the CC slot. My lighter food box (cereal, etc...) cardboard feeds fine if I feed it single layer. But I don't even feed 12 normal paper sheets into my 12 sheet feeder. I don't want to break another shredder so I will typically only feed about 6-8 sheets at max. I figure it is easier on the shredder and therefore it should last longer.

I also bought a 10 sheet backup shredder from the thrift store for $3.00. For the price, I could not pass up that deal.

I do not have many heavy cardboard boxes to deal with. The heaviest cardboard I normally deal with is Amazon boxes. Not too bad for my shredder when I cut them into strips. And we don't normally get too many boxes. Anyway, all that cardboard makes good litter for the coop.

 

[Sally PB]

Anyway, all that cardboard makes good litter for the coop.

Large pieces of corrugated cardboard with loads of leaves on top really cut down the weeds in my garden. I did that on aisles between raised beds and on the big open area around the butternut squash plants. (The squash bed is a big flat area, and I let the vines run.)

You need big pieces. Little pieces don't cover enough, overlapping them is a pain, and any raised edge wants to catch the wind and blow around, which makes the garden look like a dump.

I used to get all the large sheets of cardboard I could want from where I worked. It's one of the very few things I miss about my job.

I hear you, @gtaus, about not putting out much trash. We recycle and compost most of what "trash" we would have. 1 bag every 2-3 weeks for the two of us.

 

[DickMidnight]

I used to have maybe 4-5 bags full of household garbage to bring to the landfill every week.

no trash pickup where you live?

 

[gtaus]

Large pieces of corrugated cardboard with loads of leaves on top really cut down the weeds in my garden.

That is a good use of that heavy cardboard. I use cardboard from those boxes and lay them down on the pathways of my garden, and then cover the cardboard with grass clippings. Looks like a green carpet. The cardboard breaks down over the summer, but it serves well enough to act as a weed barrier for that growing season.

I hear you, @gtaus, about not putting out much trash. We recycle and compost most of what "trash" we would have. 1 bag every 2-3 weeks for the two of us.

Sounds like you are doing better than us! To be fair to myself, I am talking about one 13 gallon kitchen trash bag per week, not the larger trash bags for the cans out in the garage which I think are maybe 33 gallons.

no trash pickup where you live?

I live in God's country. We have to haul our trash to the landfill/recycle center ourselves. No garbage pickup for me. I think that helps me think more about how much garbage I am willing to load up and bring to the dump. Recycling products for reuse at home saves me lots of time and labor in how often I have to make a garbage run - which for me is a 30 mile round trip task.

We do have few recycle bins on the way to town, and Dear Wife will drop off a bag or two of plastic, metal, glass and some paper products to those bins every week. We take advantage of the recycle bins. But non-recyclable garbage needs to go to the 30 miles round trip to the main dumping station.

Dear Wife is a treasure, but I still have a challenge to get her to give me all the cardboard products she routinely uses up. She is more into cleaning up the house than reusing our paper products for the chickens. So, for example, an empty tissue box gets tossed into the paper recycle. An empty cardboard paper roll from paper towels in the kitchen or empty toilet paper rolls from the bathroom get tossed into the recycle bin. Her junk mail gets thrown into our recycle bin. Empty cardboard food boxes get tossed into our recycle bin. I will take out all those items and remind her that I can shred up all those paper products for use with the chickens.

But, it's like talking to a wall and the next day I will find more of the same stuff in our recycle bin. Sometimes I can reduce our recycle bin output by as much as 1/3 to 1/2 of the volume just by shredding up those products she knows I could shred at home. And sometimes she gets mad at me for "dumpster" diving in our recycle bin at home!? Any advice in talking to Dear Wife about this issue? 33+ years together and I cannot get her to change on some stuff....