Deep litter method

[Beekissed]

Here's a few pics of flower bed trimmings and weedings heading to the litter pack in my coop. In the trimmings and thinnings were some chocolate mint...and now my coop smells like Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream! Truly!

The bugs must have risen in the night to feed on the greens because the next day the chooks tossed that bedding to kingdom come, hunting for bugs.

 

[marilyn1954]

(The post below) Wow this was the best post that I have actually UNDERSTOOD! I'm from Missouri an this post was as good as SHOWING ME! Thanks
http://www.custommilling.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=27

It is important that you use food grade DE (diatomaceous earth) around chickens because the other DE will kill chickens. The link above is where I get mine since my local feed store does not handle it, and all I can find locally is not food grade.

I use the deep litter method, but I also scoop out the big manure on top of the litter daily and take it in a pail to the compost pile which I've read should be a good distance from your coop and pen. If I'm late opening the coop, the chickens have stirred it under already. My bantams poo is so small, I normally gets stirred deep into the litter. I sprinkle about 10 handfuls of fresh litter on top daily because it smells so good. My coop is 8x8' and I only use 2 bales of premium large flake pine shavings a month. I also use it in isolation pens and nest/laying boxes. The chickens scratch some of it into the run which is great, too! I have a mix of pine shavings and dried oak leaves in the run. It's actually deeper there than in the coop! LOL!

I started out with 2 bales which gave me about 3 inches on the floor, in the pens, and nest boxes. I purchased 2 more bales the very next week and distributed a whole bale in the run with the leaves, and freshened with the other bale in the coop with plenty left over for daily freshining.

My coop feeders and waterers are sitting on top of cinder blocks which is the perfect height for my large fowl and they stay relatively litter free. The smaller bantam feeders and waterers are on top of bricks and 2x4 scraps. I have a short legged (3" legs) table in the run for the run food and water to keep litter out.

I dust weekly with food grade DE using the leg of an old pair of panty hose for light, even distribution. If I experience a water spill, after removing the wet shavings (to the run) I pour the DE from a plastic drinking cup rather liberally on the wet floor before adding fresh litter. The DE also is good to apply when droppings fall on surfaces other than litter, ie: pen doors, shelves, cinder blocks, after the poo is removed. The DE keeps everything DRY and unattractive to flies! If it gets too dusty, I use a spray bottle of water and mist lightly. After a rain, I even sprinkle DE in the run. I'm hoping I won't have to do that as often after I add a sloping cover above the run, but now litter in the run gets wet when it rains, and the DE seems to discourage flies and it helps at least the top layer to dry more rapidly.

 

[RoseMarie1]

I don't use DE not even food grade DE on my D.L. I don't want to kill any good bugs in my DL so I don't use it in there. I started out using it when I had sand and it stopped the smell in the sand but now that I use DL I don't use the DE anymore. In fact I think I read on it if it gets wet it doesn't work. ??? But not going to ever use that or anything else that would kill my good bugs that keep the litter doing what it needs to do. I want to get me some meal worms to put under their roost to help with the DL. I soaked my sand 2-3 times hoping to kill any DE that is left there but hoping there is none now after all this time.

 

[billyb]

Hi everyone! Quick question-
what is "DE"? And also how do you keep the bedding dry and not smelling with ammonia? Thanks!

 

[ChristiansDaddy]

Does it have to be pine shavings? I figure if you live near a sawmill that handles many types of wood you could get the shavings from them for cheaper or free if it is ok to use multable types of shavings. I also think if you have hardwoods mixed with pine shavings it would make a better quality compost. From what I seen soil tends to be of poor quality and highly acidic around pines, while the opposite holds true for hardwoods. By mixing the two plus adding ash ect it seems like the compost would be even better for gardening. Perhaps if you have multable coops do half with just pine and ash and the other half mixed pine, hardwoods, and ash. dump them in seperate piles the pine pile being for acid loving plants and the hardwoods on being for "sweet" soil loving plants.


Granted I am very new to chicken raising, but this is my thought process from what I know. If it is wrong or harmful please let me know.

 

[RoseMarie1]

Does it have to be pine shavings? I figure if you live near a sawmill that handles many types of wood you could get the shavings from them for cheaper or free if it is ok to use multable types of shavings. I also think if you have hardwoods mixed with pine shavings it would make a better quality compost. From what I seen soil tends to be of poor quality and highly acidic around pines, while the opposite holds true for hardwoods. By mixing the two plus adding ash ect it seems like the compost would be even better for gardening. Perhaps if you have multable coops do half with just pine and ash and the other half mixed pine, hardwoods, and ash. dump them in seperate piles the pine pile being for acid loving plants and the hardwoods on being for "sweet" soil loving plants.


Granted I am very new to chicken raising, but this is my thought process from what I know. If it is wrong or harmful please let me know.

If you've ever seen what is under trees in the woods, that's how you want your DL. I have pine straw, leaves, small pine cones and really small pieces of limbs along with some bark.
DE is diatomaceous earth. My plans is to use mine in my garden when I clean it out of their run and roosting area once it needs cleaning out.

My DL doesn't smell not even under their roost. It just has an earthy smell to it. Every other day I turn the poop over and it disappears into the soil since I don't add anything to kill off the bugs. Their run, I have the DL in it as well and you hardly ever even see poop. IF they are in there and they poop like minutes before you will see that but it's like it just disappears into it. Really weird I know but it does. In fact, I made 3 grazing frames to put inside mines run so I was pulling back all the DL to put those grazing frames right up around the inside edges of their run and I found NO NONE NO poop at all. Now there is a 10' one and 2 eight foot ones and I pulled all that litter back to sit them on the soil and found NO POOP, not even inside the DL or under it or anything. I am new to this and it blew me away that I found none and I KNOW 38 chickens has to poop! I don't have that many anymore but at the time I did the DL I had that many.

 

[Beekissed]

Hi everyone! Quick question-
what is "DE"? And also how do you keep the bedding dry and not smelling with ammonia? Thanks!

DE question answered above. The other question is answered by using really good ventilation, adding layers of bedding at a time, having a coop that is not overstocked with birds, using different kinds of bedding in order to have more absorption but also quick break down of the materials(leaves, saw dust, shavings, yard debris, pine needles, etc). Don't add DE to the bedding...you'll need those beneficial bugs in there to help with the composting of the manure. No bugs, manure stays and stinks. DE equals no bugs.

It also helps if you ferment your feeds so that the poop doesn't smell so strongly and leave undigested grains rotting in your DL. Poop from fermented feeding breaks down easily and has very little smell, so it's perfect for composting with the bedding.

 

[RoosterLew]

Just thought I'd share how I do DL...
I use of mixture of pine shavings, straw and grass clippings.
The many other ingredients people use I do not have easily available and I run on too tight of a schedule to go looking for them.
The biggest thing for me is how to know which ingredient to add next. My answer is simply whichever one I cant "see"...
The last thing I added was straw, right now when you look in my coop it looks like a mixture of pine shavings and straw...really don't notice the grass clippings...so that is what I'll add next. By the time the chooks get that all mixed in you wont see any pine shavings. the straw seems to last the longest, so usually I end up with a couple of rounds of grass and pine before adding straw.

 

[All Ball]

Folks,

If you did start out your coop using DE (in my case, with a wood floor) - would I need to totally clean out, almost vacuum. to get rid of it, or is there a way to deactivate it (wetness)? My DL was quite smelly for a while - it is mainly weed grasses and leaves - but I recently added some old compost and that helped quite a bit. I'm so sorry that I killed off some of the microbial action...

Thanks for any hints!

 

[Beekissed]

Folks,

If you did start out your coop using DE (in my case, with a wood floor) - would I need to totally clean out, almost vacuum. to get rid of it, or is there a way to deactivate it (wetness)? My DL was quite smelly for a while - it is mainly weed grasses and leaves - but I recently added some old compost and that helped quite a bit. I'm so sorry that I killed off some of the microbial action...

Thanks for any hints!

Someone else did that and they just layered on top of it. The layers without DE were active and composting, the DE layer not so much....so just layer on top of it and go on, eventually it will degrade into the coop floor and remain at the very bottom. The layers on top can still attract bugs at that point.