What's better sand or straw bedding in coop?

[UrbnGardenPeeps]

Poops clean easily with a cat poop scoop, and doing so every day makes for a really clean coop.

That's what I do as well. I keep a garbage can outside filled with pine shavings. I take an empty 2 gallon bucket into the coop and scoop out the bigger clumps and mats and dump it around my blueberry bushes. Then I fill the bucket with fresh shavings and dump it in the coop. I do a couple buckets a week and it looks really nice and smells good. I'll probably shovel everything out once or twice a year. I also got a giant litter box which I filled with sand for the girls to play in. They're slowly mixing it in with the shavings and I'm kind of liking the effect.

 

[djstanczak]

I thought about sand but I read it is not recommended because it holds bacteria. I am using large pine shavings and will go with DLM in winter. I change the shavings about every 10 days. We have a 8 by 8 painted wooden floor with a 2 foot high door the runs the length so we can open it from outside and clean easily. We also covered the bottom with a tarp and when we clean we just open the door roll up the tarp and take it over to the mulch. Takes about 10 minutes to clean and put back new shavings. We also made our perches so they come off easily and I take them to the lawn, wash, spray with Neem oil. Our chicken coop and run do not smell even when it rains. Oh and I do one more thing that I believe makes a big difference, I give them feed that has no animal by product, like Klambach or Nutrena all flock

 

[HenOnAJuneBug]

I thought about sand but I read it is not recommended because it holds bacteria.

My chickens scratch around in and eat out of their own poop pile near the coop, so I imagine they have pretty robust immune systems.