Heavy clay under topsoil, what to use in the run?

[Midnight Maran Momma]

Living in our area of SE Virginia, there's a lot of heavy clay under the top 10-12" of soil. I was going to use sand in our run, as we've got a lot of high humidity, and I'd like to avoid mold in the run. HOWEVER, sand + heavy clay soil = horribly dry, hard dirt, which tends to repel worms & bugs for the chickens, not to mention its miserable in the hot summers.
Pine pellets were my next choice, but they can mold. Pine shavings would get moldy And stinky. Hemp is too expensive.
Any creative suggestions?
Planning on mixing pine pellets and shavings in the coop for warmth (and hopefully less stink) through our first winter with chickens.
The coop is 8' x 4', with 6 medium sized chickens, and an 8' x 12' run covered with 1/4" squares hardware cloth and a shade sail cover.

 

[rosemarythyme]

If you have room for a pile of wood chips, that would be the ideal base for a deep litter set up.

 

[RoyalChick]

Living in our area of SE Virginia, there's a lot of heavy clay under the top 10-12" of soil. I was going to use sand in our run, as we've got a lot of high humidity, and I'd like to avoid mold in the run. HOWEVER, sand + heavy clay soil = horribly dry, hard dirt, which tends to repel worms & bugs for the chickens, not to mention its miserable in the hot summers.
Pine pellets were my next choice, but they can mold. Pine shavings would get moldy And stinky. Hemp is too expensive.
Any creative suggestions?
Planning on mixing pine pellets and shavings in the coop for warmth (and hopefully less stink) through our first winter with chickens.
The coop is 8' x 4', with 6 medium sized chickens, and an 8' x 12' run covered with 1/4" squares hardware cloth and a shade sail cover.

Are you doing deep litter in the coop? And is the run covered or open?
I am on heavy red clay and do deep litter in the coop. I use leaves, pine shavings, stall pellets, shredded paper, and pine straw. The pine straw is lovely but I only use what I can find in the yard.
It gets humid here but I have never had a mold issue. Stall pellets are particularly good at absorbing moisture.
In the covered run I don’t do anything except from time to time I give them a big heap of leaves to play in.
They move bedding from the coop to the covered run.
Then in the open air run (electric fence only) I don’t do anything. When it gets very dry they dust bathe in the clay so I have clay dust everywhere.
The above works fine for me. I do however have a lot of space for my chickens which probably is a factor.

 

[perkolator]

Wood chips and organics. Chunky organic material like wood chips should help change the soil quality over time. The chunky bits will absolutely loosen up the clay as it gets mixed in and breaks down; it will also attract more critters such as worms who will further help penetrate and break up the clay. It's not going to be an immediate change, but you should definitely notice the benefits after a year or two when you're able to harvest some really good soil from the run.

My chicken run is at the bottom of a big hill and has denser silt/clay soil than the hard, decomposed granite type soil we have everywhere else. Since putting the chickens there with all the organic material, that soil type has been greatly improved and I can harvest some nice soil out of the run now. We hardly get rain so in the summertime I definitely water the run to promote decay of the woody material year round. It also softens and cools the soil for when the chickens dig down into it; The moisture also keep those worms and other critters wanting to be there instead of vacate the run for better soil conditions - tons of worms in every shovel, way more than my compost pile.

 

[Midnight Maran Momma]

If you have room for a pile of wood chips, that would be the ideal base for a deep litter set up.

We cut down three of the main trees in our backyard (oak, beech & something else, but it wasn't cedar) because they were dropping large branches fairly regularly (one took out an iron chair from our lawn furniture, just missing the glass topped table). The tree service ran the trees through a wood chipper but we've got toxic mushrooms growing out of the 6' pile, and I don't think that's safe for the chickens.
We're planning on using pine pellets for deep litter bedding in the coop, and probably the run, as well, at this point.

 

[rosemarythyme]

we've got toxic mushrooms growing out of the 6' pile, and I don't think that's safe for the chickens.
We're planning on using pine pellets for deep litter bedding in the coop, and probably the run, as well, at this point.

I'd just pluck out the mushrooms and maybe grab chips from a different section, or in this case, dig down, turn things over, give it a week and use the "new" surface chips. I do have random shrooms that pop up inside the run and the chickens ignore most of them, but yes ultimately if you don't feel comfortable with that better not to risk it.