What’s your favorite coop bedding?

[LittleRedCoopLady]

I buy it from New Country Organics. It's not cheap.
You could continue to use pine shavings if you installed poop boards. My coop is 8x12 with 27 ft of roost space. It takes me a total of about 7 minutes to scoop the poop boards every morning. I use PDZ on the boards.
In use.
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Cleaned.
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How many bags of hemp do you use in your coop?

 

[neo71665]

Use rice hulls because I get it free. Commercial chicken houses around here use it and I got a buddy that has 3 houses. I go fill up a couple of 55 gallon drums for my little coop when he gets a shipment.

 

[rotagen]

I use pine shavings, used to use the coarse stuff and I threw it with the poop onto my raised beds...problem is those coarse ones take forever to compost down and they rob the soil of nitrogen, as all shavings do...but coarse ones do it forever...as I learned the hard way and my tomatoes are bitching at me as I type. I like the coffee ground idea but not cheap and I thought of straw but bet it would be a pain to shovel out.

Here's the BEST solution by far... and what I did as a kid...mind you I lived in zone 9 california. NO BEDDING WHATSOEVER..just a little in the nest boxes.
When I started with chickens as a little peeper in high school back in the 70s, I bought the only good poultry book at the time, forget the name...they said the best coop design is RAISED WIRE FLOOR... Plain OLD chicken wire is what everyone used at the time... 4 2x4s sunk into concrete, a nicely angled roof with what everyone called "chicken roof" (corrugated plastic)...and an OPEN FRONT at the tall point of the coop pointing east...plainol chicken wire again (yepper, that's what we did). Nowadays I suggest hardware cloth in front and perhaps some rectangular hole wire as bottom... but you need about 1 inch holes for the poop to fall through.

What you get is pure chicken poop below the house (wire raised about 2 feet off ground so you can easily shovel about once every 1 1/2 months or so...and your garden will go nuts with appreciation...it's not all that hot with nitrogen, just use directly on surface and wet down.

I raised 3 generations of healthy chickens this way until sasquatch got them all (something that pulled a 2x4 out , 4 feet off ground, huge nails and all)...

CHICKENS ARE TOUGH... I'm probably gonna do the same thing with my next batch of free-range birds but I am now in a climate that gets down to about 20 degrees F in the winter, when I was a kid 28 was as low as it got...and that was Very rare. So I will probably have a closeable front.

Wonder if anyone else does it the old-school way? BTW I had zero problem with mites or any infections, this was about 6 yrs of chicken-ing.

 

[aart]

The only thing I advise is not leaving the water in with the coop because wet coffee grounds can mold

That to me would be a huge down side.

but long term I've spent less in replacing it or adding more.

I'm waiting for you to hit a year, that would be 'long term'.
Am terribly intrigued by the coffee ground thing....by my jaded skepticism stops me from indulging.


What kind of bedding you use may depend on how you manage the manure.
This is about cleaning, but covers my big picture
-I use poop boards under roosts with thin(<1/2") layer of sand/PDZ mix, sifted daily(takes 5-10mins) into bucket going to friends compost.
-Scrape big or wet poops off roost and ramps as needed.
-Pine shavings on coop floor, add some occasionally, totally changed out once or twice a year, old shavings added to run.
- My runs have semi-deep litter(cold composting), never clean anything out, just add smaller dry materials on occasion, add larger wood chippings as needed.
Aged ramial wood chippings are best IMO.
-Nests are bedded with straw, add some occasionally, change out if needed(broken egg).
There is no odor, unless a fresh cecal has been dropped and when I open the bucket to add more poop.
That's how I keep it 'clean', have not found any reason to clean 'deeper' or differently in 7 years.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

.
I'm waiting for you to hit a year, that would be 'long term'.
Am terribly intrigued by the coffee ground thing....by my jaded skepticism stops me from indulging.

For me it has been long term since the pine shavings have been braking down after 2-3 months. Both pine and straw molded for me when wet. But I am anxious too to see where I am in a year with the coffee!

 

[rosemarythyme]

I'm waiting for you to hit a year, that would be 'long term'.
Am terribly intrigued by the coffee ground thing....by my jaded skepticism stops me from indulging.

I'm just waiting for the bags of Grounds to be available somewhere in my vicinity. I even set up my roost area for it only to realize they won't ship this far haha. Figured by the time stores around here start carrying it, maybe we'll get a lot more reviews for it, and then I can rethink if I still want to do it.

 

[humblehillsfarm]

I'm just waiting for the bags of Grounds to be available somewhere in my vicinity. I even set up my roost area for it only to realize they won't ship this far haha. Figured by the time stores around here start carrying it, maybe we'll get a lot more reviews for it, and then I can rethink if I still want to do it.

I feel like the Grounds are in short supply. I was in TSC yesterday and they didn’t have any in stock. The company is new so I am hoping that is the only issue :/ my other theory is that they are having issues obtaining coffee grounds but that’s purely a guess. Or perhaps demand has just been that high!

 

[rosemarythyme]

I feel like the Grounds are in short supply. I was in TSC yesterday and they didn’t have any in stock. The company is new so I am hoping that is the only issue :/ my other theory is that they are having issues obtaining coffee grounds but that’s purely a guess. Or perhaps demand has just been that high!

Possibly. Because I swear I checked like a month ago and saw that a TSC an hour away carried it, then checked a few weeks ago and it said none of the TSCs anywhere in my region.