What do you use for your walkways? (it's a soggy mess over here!)

[dearmeghann]

Good morning!

We've been getting a LOT of rain. Our new coop site is experiencing some growing pains. We never had an issue with soggy walkways/paths, and figured a quick fix would be to throw down some leftover pine shavings. That's just made it worse. We use pine pellets in the run, and we worried that if we put those down, it would just make it muddy. We're about to put down some mulch to see if that helps break up the sogginess.

We've also never had to deal with as many flies! Our coop/run isn't the problem; it's the perimeter. We've added barn lime and DE, but we're not sure how much to put down (especially with the barn lime).

What do you do for your wet walkways/paths? We're probably going to look into a french drain or maybe adding some pebbles for drainage. However, I don't want to waste money if there's a quicker or easier solution. Help, please?

 

[IsayOsiyo2U]

Ditto. I hope there are some good ideas come through here. We are up to our ankles in poop soup.

 

[StinkyAcres]

Same here! I am sick of this poop soup. I plan to dig out the mud and put down gravel. A french drain or even just a trench to divert the water away definitely helps.

 

[Penpal]

Until you put in the French drain you could lie a few 2 x 4 boards down. And a 2x 4 roost.

 

[thecatumbrella]

We've used 4-6" of super chunky mulch (it's called playground mulch around here). Rake in some PDZ if you want it to dry out quicker.