Quote:
when my neighbor donated his old coop to me, he had been using deep straw in it and in the run (under a covered carport)
for his four chickens (four others did not make it to adulthood)
I cleared it out pronto !
it was dusty, it was dirty (they changed it out every three days but it was still dirty, as in earth dirt not chicken dirt),
no wonder his chickens were always sneezing
and straw gets moldy really fast ... even in a "dry" covered area --- mold is NOT your chickens' friend ...
he got rid of the chickens because they were "too much work" ... LOL, changing out the bedding that often !
our soil here is mostly sandy and rocky, very little topsoil, it drains GREAT ... which steered me towards sand under the chickens (I remember the mess at my aunt's chicken house, with matted-down hay -- I hated to go in the run there)
it's super easy to scoop out the poo from the sand in the coop .. I have only an inch or so deep in there and it works fine -- will add a poop board now that I see where the chicks prefer to roost (they have two 4-foot long roosts, perpendicular to each other right now, but I can see that the poo is all in one end of one roost ...
right now my run is big clumps of weedy grass, with some evergreen blow-down branchlets in there too, since the chicks love to eat those
as they dig down to the sandy dirt, I will add more sand out there too, the grass clumps should grow right on up through it
Really?? hmm I really thought I was being super picky with this stuff, but, I can see your point. I am changing it quite often, explain poop board, I've heard it mentioned but, never seen one? mine have a roost, they poop under it and I clean it up? if there is a better way please indulge me!!! lol!
poop boards in action!!
another coop~
and still another one
poop is scooped off the poop board in a dusting of sand, and sifted as you do a cat box, and dump in a bucket, every other or every 3rd day as you have time.
The floor stays clean, unless you've juvenile peeps running around on the floor.
Big birds go outside and rarely poop in the coop floor area.
I clean the floor shavings out & replace it every 3 or 4 months.
Love this system!
