What is best for a muddy pen?

[Tracydr]

Do they have crusher run gravel that you could have delivered to make a base?

 

[BlazeJester]

I just laid my first batch of sand. 4 50-lb bags provide ~1" cover for 64 square feet (8' x 8' run). Next step is to modify the structure so the 9' x 12' silver/brown tarp I bought will protect from rainfall without sagging. I bought dollar store bungee cords to keep it taut. I'll let y'all know how it goes next time it rains.

 

[ailurophile23]

I'm in the southwestern portion of Virginia in the mountains and having similar problems with mud - blech! Definitely don't do hay or straw - it makes a huge soppy mess and stinks. I have covered part of my run with a tarp over metal pipe (emt) "rafters" and this keeps part of the run dry which really helps. Using crusher run gravel to build up the base of the run and then topping it with sand is the next step to deal with the mud. Around here, some of the gravel companies also have sand - so do some of the landscape companies that sell mulch - you can pick it up yourself in a pickup truck or have it delivered. I also have large stepping stones to help but this time of year, even those get muddy and slick. This does mean no grass in the run but the chickens won't allow grass in the run anyway - if you really want some, you can always create a bed on top of the sand to grow a small plot of grass for them. Mine get grass when they free-range for a couple hours a day.

 

[Kuntry Klucker]

Quote:
Thanks you so much for your post, you included a lot of useful information.

This may be a stupid question but can you tell me why straw is not a good choice whereas hay is? I was just curious, this is the first time
that I have read that hay is good to help a muddy pen situation. I guess I considered stray and hay to be pretty much
the same, being something to avoid putting in the chicken pen. Thanks.

 

[Kuntry Klucker]

Quote:
Ummm, I am not really sure what crushed gravel is. Is is the same stuff that is used on a gravel
road or driveway?

 

[NinnyGillaspie]

Hey yall, We've got that black colechi, add chicken poop and rain, and we have a mess. Will dig a trench, and lay pine shavings tomorrow. Pallets in the traffic areas. Will let ya know how it goes.

 

[lucky123]

I can't see grass growing in a run with chickens. I just finished a new three stall breeder coop, and now have a mud problem myself. Its higher and harder soil where my main coop is, so, I haven't had this problem before. I think I will try a gravel base, and then sand, if that doesn't work, I will just put a tin top over the run.

 

[chick-in-florida]

i had to laugh reading that there would be grass in a chicken yard. for how long, five minutes? i guess it depends on how many chickens there are. as for having to clean up the sand, well what is wrong with doing that? i thought that's part of having chickens. the fertilizer is great for the vegetable garden! you have to clean up after any animal, that's just the sanitary thing to do. try sand, seriously. cuts down on the smell a whole lot. drains fast. chickens use it for their grit too. don't use real fine sand, use the coarse sand. and it's cheap to get a truckload of it.

 

[Yonaton]

Quote:
Neither one is going to be a 'good' or even 'great' fix for this kind of problem. The reason I use only hay is that it smells better in the coop, the birds like to scratch through it more and can actually eat it if they want to, it often contains *grass* seeds and once it's spread out wherever one needs it spread, it *will* grow grass there. Even if you don't need grass growing, it actually breaks down and gives nutrients back to the soil, so long as it's not piled too thickly over an already established grass growth, a good 'soil' won't be near as 'muddy' as just nutrient-poor dirt. Walk into some old woods and try to find a muddy spot like is being described by some of these folks near their coop hatches and doors. All that detritus builds up and breaks down into the mud/dirt...the 'mud' is a good ways below all that yet just a couple inches down you have a nice 'soil', similar to potting soil. Wet some potting soil and grab a pinch and try to tell me it's a 'slick' as mud. Straw does none of this (the use of it in coops for flooring/bedding is my *opinion, the rest is fact/experience).

It also doesn't matter which is used in 'muddy' spots that the chickens are always around...that mud is going to stink whether straw or hay is spread there or not, it's just that in my own experience the straw will eventually lay down roots and grow something at the very least, whereas straw will do nothing but sit there like a lump on a log and keep holding the smell there because it isn't breaking down like the hay does/will.

I went a whole year last year without chickens (first time that long without chickens in 25+ years). Then early this year I got some chicks and figured I'd better go ahead and put up some fencing around the hatch door for when I let them out to start to see the outside world. I knew they'd eat up all the grass, but there was nothing else I could do in this particular situation. Once the grass was gone, and it started to get a bit muddy when it rained, I started to spread the hay from the coop in the area. I now have grass growing back and I can walk in there without knowing I'll be doing an ice-skating rendition across the yard. It's still slick, but not like it was or could be, and I can *see* the grass growing, even now in the cold weather (though in Jan and Feb it'll stop growing for certain, but the ground will be hard then anyway so no problem...I planned all this out according to how the weather works here where I live and the place I put the coop and all...just gotta sit down and look at things and 'see' it in the rainy and winter seasons is all *BEFORE* even getting chickens. Before we actually moved in, I came over a few times and asked the previous owner to let me walk the property so I could figure out where was going to be the best place for a coop and run). BTW...once my birds are grown and are laying age, I take down the fencing that makes a 'run'. There's no need for it (in *MY* situation) since momma hens know far better than any human how to take care of their chicks, what they can eat, and when to warm them up and where to take them during the day outside the coop.

IMO, if a person hasn't the room to let their birds free-range outside of a 'run', the best thing they can do is pour a slab (do it correctly - sand and/or gravel base, concrete no less than 4 inches thick, matting in it to hold it together after it dries, footers, the whole nine yards. If it's not done correctly, it'll break up in no time and be a huge mess. It'll cost a little more to do it right, but it'll last a loooooong time), this way they can get a square-nose shovel and scoop the poop and spilled feed easily and then wash it down with a hose. If you want, you can even spread some hay on top of the slab though with the 'slick' surface slab, the hay (or whatever you use) will slide around far too easily.

Personally though, I'd do like I did for my mom at our other house we moved from (my brother had poured a slab for a run but didn't know what he was doing and when I finally got home from Israel a month later it was already breaking apart, had a slope that was way too steep, and looked like a mold of the top of a stormy ocean with waves all over the place)...I poured the slab (I used to be a construction carpenter building schools and warehouses and the like before I injured my back) but instead of leaving the surface slicked, I gently 'roughened' it with a push broom. No shovel is necessary with this surface, just the hose, then use anything you like to pick up the washed-off poop over on the ground where you sprayed it toward *after* it's had a chance to dry at least a little bit. The slightly roughend surface gives the birds traction and, if you wish, you can still put down some hay (or whatever) and it won't move quite as easily when the birds scratch around in it and the hose won't be needed nearly as often. Just broom up the hay (or whatever) into a pile and scoop it out into a wheelbarrow or however you're going to do it with a shovel or your hands. Make sure you pour the slab so it's at a minimum of 2" above the ground around it and that you have a quarter inch to a half inch of slope one way (so the rains and water-hosings will drain off it and not puddle).

 

[Yonaton]

Quote:
It's okay, what I have works just fine and always has, and believe me, I laugh more often from this place than you do. I don't have a big mess of sand in my yard, but have grass and trees (except for parts of the hillside which is quickly being remedied by way of my suggestions to others in here with the mud problems...with hay, not sand). What do you consider a "chicken yard"? Is it a 10'x10' fenced in area? Is it an whole acre? Was there a well established root system there *before* you put up a coop and run? Is it just a spot with 4 chickens and they've never been outside the coop and itty-bitty fenced in area and *can't* leave it because of restrictions on the size of the yard/land? Yeah, in those situations it'll be difficult if not impossible to keep grass growing. In those situations what *I* would try, is throwing a flake or two of *good* hay in with the birds, so that with hope they'll eat more of that than the established grass. It will only make the grass stay a while longer, but also in that situation, I'd have a tractor for the birds and if you manage it correctly, you would have a grass yard all the time. *My* run is growing back, mainly because the birds don't stop there when I open the hatch door, now they go straight to the feeders and then out free-ranging. I already explained though that I didn't have the problem quite as badly as others have it and I took care of it my way and it worked. Then again, if my yard was that small, I'd not have chickens, but instead would raise rabbits or nothing at all.

The fertilizer I get from my chickens is mixed with hay, which breaks down and returns nutrients to the soil even if there was no poop in it. It will make the soil far, far better for any garden than just thowing some scooped up poop and sand into the dirt. Till in what I spread in my ground and I'm going to have a nice, dark nutrient-rich soil in only a few years (my hillside is already proof of that even though it's only been half a year, my garden soil back at our old house was even better proof). Sand and the term "cheap" is relative to where one lives...in Florida, where sand is everywhere, you bet it's "cheap". Unless one doesn't mind looking out in their backyard and seeing half the yard as a sand pit, then obviously it's no big deal.