What to put down in run?

[jonadue]

When I built my run,in March, it was an area of my garden that I gave up for the chickens, so it was already just dirt. I backfilled the run with peat (from a garden store) . By the end of July, even though I raked the poop up weekly, it became hard packed and started to smell. We let our girls out for supervised free ranging for a few ours a day and they head to the tree line and dig through the leaves, so I thought it might be a good idea to add leaves to the run. Our birds love it and not only that, the smell went COMPLETELY away. The run is always tossed up and the girls are constantly digging around in it. I just add a new layer every week or so asit needs it. Ive been doing it since July and it doesnt seem to build up, but if it does I can just add it to the compost pile and best of all its Free.

 

[byronallo]

Thanks everyone.. Jonadue, your situation sound similar to mine.. I will try this out!