Long winter days means the
chickens spend a lot more time resting (and pooping) on their
roosts. As a result, I refresh the deep
bedding more often,
a task that is as simple as opening a bag of autumn leaves my mother
kindly collected from her suburban curb, then scattering the high
carbon bedding on top of the manure.
As you can see from the
photo, when I run low on autumn leaves, I sometimes use storebought
straw, although straw isn’t quite as high in carbon and thus doesn’t
use up as much manure. In his amazing new book The
Small-Scale Poultry Flock, Harvey Ussery recommends
using any kind of high carbon bedding that’s cheap and easy for the
chickens to scratch through. His coops are bedded with oak leaves
but Ussery also recommends kiln-dried wood shavings, wood chips, and
sawdust.
From my own experience,
I highly recommend stockpiling your bedding right beside the chicken
coop. We’ve yet to get our act together, so manure often builds
up on the coop floor before I get around to hunting down some fresh
bedding to add on top. In the winter, a bit of exposed manure
isn’t such a big deal, but in the summer the manure stinks and draws
flies while letting some of the precious nitrogen escape into the
air. Remember — a properly managed chicken coop should be
a pleasant environment for both you and your birds!
campaign, keeping manure out of your birds’ drinking water.
How deep is your straw there at the door?
I’d say it’s maybe ten inches deep so far. The way the method works, you start with a few inches of bedding and just keep adding more on top to cover up manure. Since the bedding/manure mixture lower down is composting, it doesn’t get as deep as you might think.
And then in the spring it heads to the garden?
Pretty much, although you want to rake back the top four or five inches to save as inoculant for the next year’s deep bedding.
Harvey Ussery, in his excellent book, which I checked out from the library, says one can use undried wood chips as long as they are aged. How long do they need to age? We just had to cut down a 100 year old apple tree and 5 ailing, 25-ft tall juniper-type trees. I have about 2 cubic yards of chips and shredded, fine material from this. I would like to know how long it needs to age before I can use it.
Also, do I need to cover the chip pile?
Most of my 35 inches of annual rain fall comes between October and June.
I was thinking of placing a couple of old wood pallets on top of the chip pile and then draping a tarp over that. My goal is to keep the chips from becoming too damp, yet to allow good air flow by not laying the tarp directly on the pile.
If I can get the plastic plumbing pipe cheaply, what would the effect be if I put some vertical pvc pipe with holes drilled in to allow more air into the center of the pile.
Thanks for the help.
RubyB — Good question! I’m not 100% sure why he tells you to age the chips. The more I think about it, unless you think your chickens would be eating the sawdust (which they shouldn’t if they have plenty of good food available), fresh would probably be better since the manure from your chickens will cause them to decompose anyway. Please do report back with your results!