Wet stinky run....

[WthrLady]

A thought about all sand in cold climates. It freezes, and is really, really cold. Deep litter doesn't smell, and the pine shavings and litter offer heat as it decomposes, holds sunlight heat, and holds heat in pockets of the litter. It gives the birds a warmer place to be than naked sand. Something to think about if you have long cold winters.

 

[TashaFrancois]

We have a raised the bed by doing deep litter. Now it drains downhill towards my vegetable garden. Great fertilizer. When it’s really wet we buy a $5 bail of straw from tractor supply as it takes longer to become mud. In the dry months we use hemp for substrate and it helps a lot. Have you added DE before? A must for deep litter imo.

 

[WthrLady]

Absolutely not. No DE in the run. It can damage micro- organisms in the soil and in the litter bed. I need those organisms for breakdown. I do have DE in the coop, in the stall sweet.

I don't use straw as A: I can't stand the smell. B: here it tends to mold.

Straw is banished to the stalls in the barn for bedding.

 

[TashaFrancois]

Absolutely not. No DE in the run. It can damage micro- organisms in the soil and in the litter bed. I need those organisms for breakdown. I do have DE in the coop, in the stall sweet.

I don't use straw as A: I can't stand the smell. B: here it tends to mold.

Straw is banished to the stalls in the barn for bedding.

Gotcha. Any chance you can raise it higher? I hope you find the right solution.

 

[WthrLady]

I don't have a problem since I put in a french drain uphill from the whole coop two years ago.

 

[ChocolateMouse]

We used to get a maximum of about 6" standing water in the chicken pen where I live. We went the deep litter route.
We put down a full 1' of wood chips through the whole thing, raked in every leaf in our lawn, and threw down a bale of straw. Instant relief.
The wood chips came from local tree companies where you can get them for free. If you have the time/space, let them age for 6 months first to let any fungal blooms die down. We had 14 yards delivered to my property for free and dumped in our driveway. We move it about 150' manually. Takes about 4 people 2 hours but it's just one day and we buy food and ask friends to help and it pays off. No smell. No mess. No soggy ground. The wood chips soaked it all up like a sponge.

The payoff is great too. Not only do the chickens absolutely love it (digging through it, dust bathing in the fine particulate, etc) but every couple years we rake the woodchips off to one side and take the amazing new super-fertile topsoil out for a new garden bed. We could leave it there to keep raising the moisture tolerance of our soil and the grade of the chicken pen, but it's actually become a benefit to have all the water drain into the pen where it soaks into the deep litter. Our whole lawn is drier as a result and we have no swampy gross chicken mess.

Every couple years we get another load for free and move it into the chicken pen in large quantities. Works great. Of course, a drain works too, but for us there's nowhere to drain to. The whole area is fairly flat former swampland. And if you only have about 6" or less of standing water that stinks it's a good solution.

 

[Criticalicious]

We're surrounded by pine forest, so we used free pine needles to create a carpet. Dried leaves work too. The chickens love to dig through and shred up the leaves. If you provide them with enough dry ground and sun, they'll build their own dust baths.

 

[WhoDatChick]

Thank you ALL for all of the great tips!!... I was just gonna ask about sand!.. we do not have long harsh winters so no worry about it being too cold... I have had it chock full of wood chips... as a neighbor has a great big pile from cutting down trees... and it has been lovely and wonderful for dust bathing.. and everything else for that matter.. then this fall I added lots of leaves and pine needles from my yard... but since the rains have come (and have not stopped!) none of that is working. And I was thinking to just add a bunch more leaves and even more pine needles.. but as I said, my yard floods so all of those leaves and pine needles are soaked as well! Soooo, this is gonna take some thinking .. and to decide on which one of these great tips would be best for my situation
Thank you all very much!!
And we do have plans to install a drainage system just because of all the flooding in general but who knows when that’ll happen... so that would probably take care of most of the problems.

 

[WhoDatChick]

Here is my coop and run...
As you can see.. it’s completely covered so all the water is coming from the surrounding ground...

 

[Grits&Eggs]

We used to have a flooding problem, but turns out adding a foot of mulch and fixing up the drainage around the outside worked like a charm, water ran around the outside instead of thru the center, and creating multiple puddles. Highly recommend getChipDrop.com!!