I get arborist wood chips delivered for free. As they sit in a large pile, waiting for use, bugs, worms etc. take up residence. I take a couple of five gallon pails to dump in the (covered) run periodically. The girls know there's treats coming when they see the buckets
I have used deep litter for several years. I studied a lot about it before we got chickens. When we built our 9’X9’ coop we laid down concrete blocks one level below the ground then one level on top of that above the grounds then put 2X8” (or whatever width the blocks are) boards on top with large bolts that went through the boards into concrete mix that we poured into the blocks in order to build the sides of the coop on top of that wood. So we had a dirt floor and rat digging protection and plenty of concrete depth to protect the wood.
I like the idea that we are learning from our livestock! That is so true! Years ago I worked at our community dairy and I raised our chickens in an indoor coop. The chickens were nest layers so they had a good floor space to live on. It is amazing what the animals tell you about their comfort and their peaceful daily life. You have to make yourself part of the flock and herd. They listen to your voice and they watch your body language and they learn “you”. So we should listen and watch them to learn “them”.
The biggest thing to think about is whether the medium you use will be toxic to your gardens later. I have used corncob bedding but it was doused in some sort of herbicide, so even though it was a good product, it was toxic and contaminated my gardening soil. We gotta be careful what we use if we plan on using them for compost.
Granulated corn gluten can be purchased as an "organic" pre-emptive "weed control" product by landscapers so I doubt it has anything to do with being sprayed with noxious chemicals... it has something to do with the corn itself.
Ive used the deep litter method for many years with straw but on top of a wood floor. Once a week i will add more straw to the coop on top of the poo to be clean. It keeps the chickens warm in the winter too because of the composting. Many years its work great but last winter we moved more out of town and started a new coop, we learned in spring that it was a great place for the mice to have babies and a good place for small snakes to be born and the straw was very heavy to clean out at the end of winter…..this year we are trying more of a short term composting method, cleaning it out completely at least once a month and spraying a homemade contraption with Cayenne, cinnamon, and peppermint extract, along with diatomaceous earth after. We shall see if this works better, so far so good
What an amazing wealth of knowledge, this is why it's sooooo important that generations work together! I love learning from older folk who have the life experiences that I am just setting out on, what a blessing to listen to Harvey!!! 🥰
Incredible info here. I have a friend in Oregon that does this and I'm here to say that it works, so well. I was amazed to see the black, balanced, compost her chickens were making -- and the rife, healthy, growth of her garden located right next door.
I have tried several things in my chicken coops and deep litter straw is what we returned to. It is always the freshest smelling, cleanest, and also warmest for the chickens in the winter. Especially since the composting poop adds heat too. The straw makes a nice fluffy bed for them to jump off the perch into. We were concerned about them jumping down from the perches and getting bumblefoot, with how the other bedding that was easy for them to move and constantly leave bare wood floor. I am on the email for Chelsea Green, I bought a great book about The Regenerative Grower's Guide to Garden Amendments. I will have to check this one out. After three years of chicken keeping and breeding them, I am always interested in what others do.
It may not be as natural, but to make that barrier in our wood structure, we used a rubber roofing application on the floor and two feet up the sides of the walls. It has lasted 10 years and when needed we can pressure wash the floor.
I love how Mr. Ussery emphasizes learning by simple observation and your flocks behavior! I purchased his book a few months ago under Amazon's recommendation and it has become my poultry bible. Thank you so much for having him on your program!! I am a newbie and pickup my pullets early March.
I'm jealous. We don't get out chicks til September. I had no idea they would all be gone so fast. U live u. U learn. 😆 gotta love it, though! Either way I'm ridiculously excited about this new path my husband and I have chosen to learn as well as show our children. I grew up farming but he is from Pittsburgh! Two very diff lives for sure. Hoping to enjoy them as much as I did as a child and head into Kunekune pigs and some mini milk cows even! Never not ready for the storm that's headed our ways. Best of luck to you and ur family! U won't regret it!
What a great interview!!! Those of us that have a substantial amount of leaves to deal with can turn that negative abundance into a positive. I have been using deep liter method in my 10x12 prefab shed (barn) that has a floor but has a poly type flooring. It is a real pain in the arse to clean in the spring (I'm almost 66) and it is a chore! With that said, I know my chickens are happy and warm. I also have great compost to add onto my garden in the fall. I use a combination of straw and wood chips. The straw makes my job in the spring much easier to clean because I can take out in large pitchfork sections. I mostly use wood shavings on floor with ONE layer of straw. The straw is put on the shelves of my coop for the birds to burrow into. Works like a charm.
I have been doing the deep shavings with my meat chicks and fill my compost bins when done, I did it with my hens and raked up the top composted but the composted dirt that got built up is 3 inches deep, I stripped that and put in all my beds and wow my fall garden boomed, I will finish stripping the other half of run and again will get my spring beds ready once I get everything harvested Christmas week
Sounds like everyone has a lot of labor intensive ways to keep chicken coops bedded and clean. I like my way best. There is a large catch pan with a mix of sand and PDZ, (keeps smell down), under the 2x4 roost, that catches 90% of the poo when they are indoors over night til I let them out in the morning. I simply use a kitty litter scoop for that. They spend time outdoors Spring Summer and Fall so no poop in the coop and Winter they are under a huge canopy still no poop in the coop. Coop has wood floor, bedding is minimal, pine shavings, which I spot clean daily with a kiddie rake. Easy peasy and doesn't take much time. 🐓
I use leaves for deep litter. we have an area that the oak and maple leaves are knee deep in early Nov. We fill 2 10 foot trailers full of leaves and put them all in our run. By the time we are done it is 2.5 to 3 feet deep. Then we go back and rake and fill leave bags we buy at walmart or home depot. Or if we get really lucky, someone we know has bagged leaves and will let us pick them up. I try to fill about 75 bags of leaves. We store the leaves in a dry shed and just empty a bag at a time as needed. We fold up the bags and save them. We can get a few years out of each bag. In the mid summer the leaves in the run are pretty much gone, but they free range all summer so the run isn't heavily used at that time any way. We have scrapped off a few inches of soil from the run to fill raised garden beds, it was marvelous. It does take up some space to store the leaves, but i get a full year of bedding for free. I have had rats one year, but we now remove the chicken feeder every evening and I don't pile my garden debri in the run any more. I found that really attracted the rats. I do have rat traps/poison in safe places around the coop. So far that has been enough to keep the rats/mice at bay.
But... but.... but... I've read that oak is toxic to chickens... do you find that they end up with more health issues or shorter life spans? Genuine curiosity here, not a criticism.
@@whytchywooo No problem didn't take it as criticism. I have never had any problems using oak leaves. In fact I googled are oak leaves toxic to chickens. Their is a thread on back yard chickens talking about that and all the comments were along the line of, if oak leaves were toxic I would have lost my flock years ago. In the past 8 years I have lost 2 chickens to reason I could not identify such as a predator. I know people with tons of large oak trees in their yard and free range chickens with no problem. Hope that answers your question.
Thank you for your kind reply. I have been neurotic about trying to keep the leaves and acorns away from the chicken run. Its nice to know I can relax a little!
Not all of Canada is as cold as the north mid US!!! I'm in beautiful balmy NS, at least so far this winter. We've had no cold or hardly snow yet. But, hey, I won't hold my breath. Lol
That sounds great and you could even build a green house alongside it and the chickens could help heat the greenhouse. You’d just have to make sure the foundation has good drainage or the chickens could drown.
There are pros and cons to using the wood chips from commercial trimmers, one being that you do not know what kind of trees were trimmed in each load you receive. Another con which I think is very important is there is no way of knowing what kind of sprays might have been used prior to being trimmed. We can have all those chips we want to have delivered when they're in our area but I'm just so leery of them. We have a huge chipper/shredder now and I can hardly wait to start trimming our own trees and chipping them for our use. It will chip 4-6" limbs so I should think I might be able to put heavy cardboard through it also. Thanks for a great discussion as always.
This content was a huge blessing for me and my son! We are building a huge coop right now and will be implementing everything we've learned here. Thank you so much! ❤
So I'm the first time chicken owner. We started with three unfortunately we were letting them free range and a Hawk got one. Anyway we had lots of stinking flies and this and that and the other throughout the summer and I decided as it started to get colder maybe I needed to try to insulate my dirt floor so I added about 4 inches of what I will call Pine shavings that I got from the local D&B to use for chicken bedding. I did however add in a couple of handfuls of hay. I also use the hay in the roosting Box. That's the only spot where I tend to have any buildup of poop. But really don't have the nasty smell yet. I will go back out and add a little bit more of the wood shavings again tomorrow when I go out to clean out the roosting box. Yes I said cleaning it out. I don't need it building up to a point where it's unsafe for them inside the roosting box. I didn't see this video beforehand or I would have done it a long time ago. I just happened to have decided that was the best route to go and lo and behold I guess I'm right. We do feed some table scraps but not all. Still learning a lot. Our neighbors also have chickens that they got at the same time hours are laying eggs theirs are not. They have theirs in a much smaller confined area and they do not use any heat for them whatsoever. I put in a heat lamp because I would rather my chickens be slightly comfortable and above freezing on those nights when it's down in the teens or single digits. And mine started laying eggs about a week and a half ago most days we get two eggs sometimes we've had three which is kind of weird to me. LOL Anyway I will try and watch more of your videos and see what else I can learn. And yes I have gone very safe with the heating lamps. They are mounted permanently with screws to solid structure. And then on top of that I used chicken wire to build a cage completely around them. Not to mention the fact that the electric cords are completely up and Out Of Reach of the chickens and they are safety wired as well to keep them from accidentally getting pulled down in case something really weird happens.
I used sand when my chickens were babies and I use pine shavings now. Not sure how the sand would do in my coop now that they are older. But I'm always open to try new things. I'm new at this & still learning 😊
I tried sand and unless your able to go with a small rake and pick up poo daily which I couldn’t due to working 10-14 hr days but I can go once a week and move my deep shavings around in run and scoop out the poo in coup under their roosts and sprinkle DE my chickens have no creepy crawlers and no stink
I used sand this summer and it was AWESOME!!! Fall I transitioned into deep litter, First time, So Far So good. Just insulated the roosting area, Hoping to keep those girls Warm, Siberia is coming!!
I’m still new at this, only three (3) years in 17 chickens total at the beginning as we adopted four older chickens from a friend moving out of state. We have earth coops, and used pine shavings, but when we started getting baby chicks the last two years, we switched to sand as the local wild animal and bird shelter uses for two (2) years now and where the birds perch they seem to excrete in one area, and the rest of the two 10x10 coops, have not had any smell ever. I am thinking we are very blessed, but I like the deep litter mulch.
My coop is off the ground with a wooden floor. Just finished our first year with DLM. Loved it. Switching to hemp in the coming year. Love the autopilot of DLM.
A: “So why won’t you shop at Tractor Supply anymore?” B: “Because someone online told me not to.” A: “Oh. Did they say why?” B: “No.” A: “Um.. Ok. Give me $50.” B: “Here you go.”
Thank you. Great info, some of which I already incorporate. We have a raised coop with a fenced in run, with double doors to help deter the wildlife that enjoys the flavor of chickens. We put a plastic roof over their run, to keep it from filling up with snow (we are in NH) and excess rain. We do use straw in the coop as we found it best for the flooring. Interesting about the leaves, as I add it to our compost, yet in the fall, I added it to their run along with some of our fresh items for compost. Those girls work so hard, where on the next beautifully warm day, possibly 40*, I can pull out all the wonderful compost and put in new for them to work through. Chickens...best decision ever!!
“If you smell manure, you smell mismanagement”…..there is no truer statement! In my state of South Dakota we are basically under attack by mega confinements and those operations stink to high heaven. 😢
Josh, I sure enjoyed your interview with Harvey and I learned a lot. I have an 8’x8’constructed coop about 3’ off the ground. The floor is wood however I’ve lined the floor with linoleum so no manure touches the wood and remains dry. I’ve got 10 hens that run in an attached covered run of 1/2” hardware cloth sides and a 4’ 90 degree bend predator apron stapled to the ground around the run then buried with soil and grass right up to the walls of the run. That being said, I deep litter my coop and nest boxes with wood shavings. I use a product called “Coop N Compost” which is a ground clay called zeolite. I turn the wood shavings every three days and sprinkle some clay over the turned bedding then add some fresh shavings. This helps to absorb the wetness and keep odor down. I can’t let my chicks free range because of the high predator problem. It was good to learn I could use the old coop bedding in the run. At present it is muddy and the hens always have damp feet.
How much of the wood shavings do you turn over? I was doing that and i kept finding wet bedding about an inch or more down. And every time I turn any over i always smell ammonia.
I started using the zeolite clay, sprinkling on coop floor the very first time I put shavings down. This begins the absorption of urine and odor control. I have an 8x8’ coop with 10 hens. I turn and add zeolite and shavings every two days. When the shavings depth gets to about a foot deep, it’s too heavy for me personally to turn so I pull it out and deposit it at the end of their run outside where it continues to decompose. Then I start sprinkling fresh zeolite and shavings on coop floor. If your chickens are generating so much manure that their bedding is always wet, you may need more zeolite and shavings, may need turning more often, may need more coop space for chickens or less chickens. The old shavings out side draw in earth worms which the chickens delight in scratching and digging for. Sometimes I take old coop manure/shavings and add it to my garden compost bins. That way the chicken run never gets too full.
35 years ago the farmers daughter brought me.home to meet Dad ...fhe farmer told me to go clean out the chicken coop ... Sure ... Got er done!!! hindsight ??? I wasnt the first or the last to take that test !!!
After having my backyard chickens for 2 years and going well, I heard about the deep liter method. What they didn’t tell me it attracts rats. I ended up having to get rid of my chickens to get rid of the rat infestation.
@@MrsKeane25 from what I’ve researched since this is that I created the perfect environment for rats. They love chicken poop and with the water and chicken feed it gave them everything they want.
I saw this somewhere To Get rid of the rats by getting a small container, cut an hole in 1 end, put baking soda and some cornbread mix together put the cover on and place where the rats will eat. The rat will go away and pass over as rats can't burp and they die from indigestion. 🙏 Or ask mother nature.
I really need to get out of the south more apparently. So many people from out of state complain about the humidity, it's like they've never felt it before.
I moved to east tennessee from Oregon last year. Humidity is a THING! man! I never knew what people were taking about until I felt it for myself. Ha! Depends on what part of Oregon though...I was raised in Astoria (where Goonies was filmed) and it rains and is gloomy most of the year then my husband's job led us south east Oregon about 3 hours. Now, it would get 90's in summer. I got as many tomatoes there as I get here. Lots of squash and brassica. Even a few bell peppers... like 5 jalapeños. I love how many jalapeños we get here. My garden was like a jungle here in the summer. So many cucumber I didn't know what to do with. First time growing and eating okra... could go without. First time growing melons which was all the hype! And on another note... the bugs here! Oh boy! But, my first time seeing fireflies was so magical.
@@Our_Hive_of_Five To be fair, this year was the worst year for pests that I've seen since the previous solar cycle. Definitely the worst for Japanese beetles I've ever taken note of. We love our okra here and when I grow it, it rarely makes it to the pickling jar. I either eat it right after I pick or I'm eating the blossoms. Congratulations on your gardening experience this year and the copious amounts of peppers!
I did sand for 1st yr and half of owning chicken.... changed to straw.... the cold weather froze the sand cuz of all the humidity in the air... couldn't keep the sand from being so hard... sure liked it better than the deep litter method otherwise.
@@mimasminihomestead For sand, I just “fluff” it every month or so, just like I do with my compost. Just turn it over. I don’t even spread it back down, the hens love to do that for me:) Keeping the rain off of it is key though.
You can get washed sand for this purpose and it doesn't pack together no matter how wet.. gravel companies will sometimes give it away for "sandboxes" or you can buy for around 50 bucks a ton depending on your area
I can't seem to get started on this method due to -30/-40 Celsius Temps in Canada. The straw or woodchips freeze with the chicken poop. Makes it hard to clean out also to mix and layer, so needless to say I'm struggling with this issue 😅
I am also from Canada, and want to do deep method, I was wondering if leaves would work. But also thinking have to give chickens more sq footage per chicken.
Love it! Did you two coordinate your Christmas shirts?!😂 What’s your recommendation for reducing Avian flu from spreading by migrating bird droppings from contaminating your flock? Tarping coops reduces sunlight…so what’s your suggestion?
Elderberry is a natural antibiotic for Chickens for Avian flu. Berry seed is poisonous to humans. Be careful if you have young ones. I boil & simmer 4 a few hrs. To make syrup. Drain seeds. Immune booster. Recipes online.
Straw is the best available bedding for me. I can only fit 1-2 straw bales in my coop, so every other week I pitch the used bedding into their run and add new straw. It becomes part of my management for the outdoor run, and really doesn't take me long to do. In future years I may be able to have leaves stockpiled available, but I use the leaves for other purposes where I can't currently use any manure because I don't have ready access to large amounts of wood chips. I use straw for bedding for my goats as well, and then the used goat bedding gets tossed into the chicken run.
@Nicholas Johnson it's super expensive this year! I was fortunate to be able to buy a big load of it in 2021 at about $4/bale, which has been enough for this winter too.
I have 2 Rhode Island hens .I lost 2 rock island hens & 2 bhram hens ( 12 is. Old) we are building a very nice 10 chicken coop & a 12 ft run . My husband calls it a chicken palace. I’ve been looking at all of the different items to use in the coop.
Can one use charcoal to improve the carbon within the coop? I'm also wondering if the charcoal would benefit the mineral content for the chickens as well. Thank you in advance.
Too much overthinking for some people. Put down a plastic tarp, spred some grass clippings, & add grass clippings and corn every now and then. The chickens will manage the air flow and turning. What corn sprouts if it happens to get wet the corn will sprout and the chickens will eat it.
What about using bedding pellets such as what you see at Tractor Supply? It’s compressed sawdust pressed into pellets. My chicken pen/coop is a 10x10 dog kennel with a heavy tarp over the top and half of the back side walls for shelter and keeping the rain out and wind out. Thanks for the feedback.
Wonderful info; thanks for sharing it all! Would there be any benefit to inoculating the deep litter with mushroom spawn (while still on the floor of the coop)? Or does it cause the deep litter to break down too quickly?
I would expect the chickens to happily eat all the mycelium. If you have access to wood chips they will produce their own mycelium and the chickens will eat it as they find it. Which is fine, but then you haven't wasted efforts with culinary spawn that might be better used in a garden bed. Example: wine caps.
First Saturday Lime helps too!! For Chickens Just look it up.. I also use it for Cats with the Equine pellets from Tracker Supply.. RU-vid has alot of videos for cats and pellets..not to mention a box of cat litter is like 20$..a 40lb bag of equine bedding pellets is like 7$ sift and replenish..I take cat poop out everyday..great for ammonia peeing animals..
What we did was start with quarter inch galvanized hardware cloth. Same as we put under anything planted, where we didn't want the roots or bulbs eaten. This also keeps little compost workers safe from everything except the chickens. Alternatively, in the mountains the coop floor was carved out of a rock like layer. Predator tunnel and small animal proof, all in one. Side walls, above the deep litter barrier, were to prevent chick issues, especially if the bantams had a batch. We used more quarter inch wire. Mice were torn apart and eaten by our chickens around the property. Snakes too. Hatchery bred and always sheltered chickens may not know how to do that though. So any side wall wire may need to be smaller than half inch, even without bantams.
I have some words between 40 to 60 roosters and chickens living in a 78 arrow shed attached to a two wide hoop house connected to a trampoline which was modified to be three stories tall and wrapped fully in chicken wire except for where the screen door is which is chicken wired as well hold me in the atrium do I have capping I put about 4 to 6 wheel barrels of wood chips in the pretty much a 40 ft round room once every 3 months I have to remove all compost and add about six wheelbarrows plus of wood chips majority of the time they stay outdoors one click of chickens all hibernates at night meanwhile the other one sit up on the water table in the atrium
Add HDPE lining to your litter box for easy scrape and clean out! Use shredded hemp bedding - 1 foot deep- absorbent, natural and great compost after cleaning out!
My pen gets wet I covered my run with tin but unfortunately my tin has holes still leaking I been throwing lots of pine having in I have 15 chickens and 2 Turkey's in one pin will soon build a bigger pin maybe this spring but for now this is what it is and my new one will be covered to my husband said to do this same thing in the chicken yard composting chicken yard but with no more leaks I'm in south Mississippi and it gets really hot and sticky right now here
❓❓ I was considering getting a trailer of saw dust from my Amish neighbor's lumber yard. Will that cause too much dust? I have been using deep litter method with straw and only have been cleaning it out 3-4 times per year and it makes wonderful compost.
I'd only lay down such a quantity after the chickens are out of the coop, if possible. Let settle. After that, sawdust works fine, provided you have something to block incoming high winds.
Hello! I am new to chickens , and am currently researching my options before we get chicks. I live in zone 7b - Alabama. It is HOT AND HUMID for 75% of the year. Is the deep litter method recommended for me , or will the coop get too hot in the dead of summer (upper 90’s) ?
Can anyone help me... do you do anything on a daily basis with the large piles of droppings from under the roosts? Some days my chickens don't touch those piles. Do I break the droppings up and spread them around the top of the bedding? Or do I turn the droppings under? I keep finding wet bedding a few inches down. Thank you for any help!
I believe Mr. Ussery says that you need to get in there and turn the heavy manure under the roosts into the rest of the deep litter b/c the chickens won't do it, esp if it gets compacted.
What we did under roosts was from an old method that taught to dig out a pit there. Put a livestock grate over it, and get a worm pit going for three summer months before any chickens were using it. Alternatively, dig the pit, dump sawdust in. Start the worm batch out of the coop to get them used to processing small amounts of chicken manure, and their population up. Then add to pit under grate. The rest of the teachings about that pit were a bit odd, but the pit, and grate with started composting in it, works perfect. We lined our pits with quarter inch wire, same as the floors, to prevent raiding by any problem creatures. We also experimented with removing the livestock grates a couple years in, and the pit kept working great. Better even, without the cover grate, because it became zero maintenance.
Very interested conversation, I do not have any chickens, have considered them, so my question would be should you or could you start with a layer of charcoal from a fire pit? I really can't think of anything more active carbon based than that
My husband and I use sand and diatomaceous earth. We don't have any rodent issues due to the feral cats that live on our property. ( Edit: Apparently, if you don't feed feral cats, they won't overpopulate. That's my experience, anyway. )
@@kgd6147 I left fresh food, ( canned and dry), out for them every every day for two weeks and they never touched it! Also, I've never heard of a wild animal to hunt for "sport".
