Hello, my chickens have eaten down just about all the grass in my new coop and it's time for some bedding. Seems like wood chips are very popular and usually easy to obtain and not too expensive (or free). My local city compost site chips all the brush and branches they receive into large piles and then puts some out for people to take for free, so usually it's broken down a decent amount. It's also all sorts of various material sizes and shapes; as you can see from the pictures here. Is this stuff good to use for my completely covered run? Should I just take the bigger chunks out and leave the rest? Some of the piles of compost have more bits of pine needle branches and unsure if that's ok as well.
Or should I just contact a local tree trimming company and see if I can get actual chips from them? They would be fresh though and would need to be aged, so that doesn't help me immediately. Otherwise I can buy playground mulch from a company locally and it will be free of any bad debris and they say it's virgin wood. Unsure if it's aged at all and if I need to worry about moisture. Would have to ask. $40 a yard.
We plan on mulching around my kids playground and all around our small fruit orchard, so we are going to be buying the actual mulch anyway for that use. But figured if I could get free stuff that is going to break down a lot faster with manure and be replaced more often to go into my compost pile, that's one less thing I have to pay for. Or should I just use the same material for everything?
Or should I just contact a local tree trimming company and see if I can get actual chips from them? They would be fresh though and would need to be aged, so that doesn't help me immediately. Otherwise I can buy playground mulch from a company locally and it will be free of any bad debris and they say it's virgin wood. Unsure if it's aged at all and if I need to worry about moisture. Would have to ask. $40 a yard.
We plan on mulching around my kids playground and all around our small fruit orchard, so we are going to be buying the actual mulch anyway for that use. But figured if I could get free stuff that is going to break down a lot faster with manure and be replaced more often to go into my compost pile, that's one less thing I have to pay for. Or should I just use the same material for everything?