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Deep bedding for chickens
 Our
pasture experiments required us to build chicken coops for the first
time, which meant dealing with chicken manure. There are four
ways to handle the endless amounts of manure that build up in a chicken
coop:
- Ignore it. This
works best with a dirt floor, but still ends up being an unsightly and
foul-smelling mess.
- Put bedding on the floor of the
coop and change it regularly. If you really do clean out
the coop regularly, this method can work, but most people end up
putting the task off until you're pretty much using method 1.
- Make a raised mesh floor so that
the manure falls through onto the ground below. This
method sounds pretty cool, but in practice the manure tends to block up
the holes, so you either have to clean the floor or go back to ignoring
it. And then there's the manure on the ground to deal with.
- Deep bedding. Also
known as deep litter, this method involves adding
fresh bedding on top of the soiled bedding regularly. In
essence, you're building a mini compost pile on the floor of your
chicken coop, so you don't end up with bad odors. After about a
year (or whenever the bedding gets so high that you're bumping your
head on the ceiling), you shovel out the lower layers and use them on
your garden.
 I'd read that deep
bedding is good for your chickens' health, but I have to admit that my
early experience with deep bedding was less positive. This past
winter two of our old hens came down with a lingering case of diarrhea
--- the first time we've had sick chickens on the farm. The
problem could have just been caused by their advanced age, but it might
also have been due to the flock being cooped up with their own waste
all winter. On the other hand, the helpful microorganisms that
counteract pathogens accumulate in deep litter as it ages, so hopefully
we'll see disease resistance on our more mature deep bedding this
winter.
 On the bright side, the deep
litter definitely did its job of making my life easier. As long
as I remembered to add more leaves or straw frequently as our broilers
grew up, the coops stayed clean and odor-free. And during the
winter when the outside soil temperature was a chilly 27 degrees
Fahrenheit, the composting litter on the floor of the chicken coop
nearly reached 60 degrees. Surely that free warmth was
appreciated!
 To get best results, you're
supposed to always keep your deep bedding at least six inches
deep. As anyone who's worked with compost knows, rotting
vegetation gets smaller and smaller, so deep litter doesn't get thick
as fast as you'd think. I stole
some deep bedding prematurely this past spring because I
needed some rich mulch for a fruit tree, but I haven't harvested any of
the compost I hope is on the bottom layer of our two coops
currently. Maybe by spring, I'll have black gold to pitchfork
into my wheelbarrow.
Our chicken waterer is perfect on
deep litter since it keeps the bedding dry.
This post is part of our 2011 Chicken Experiments lunchtime series.
Read all of the entries:
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