[Julia1521]

HI guys,

I would be interested to see what everyone's thoughts are on using hardwood woodchips as a surface in chicken runs.

I have a flock of about 50 chickens. They have access to a large grass area during the day but overnight are shut into a smaller netted area where their houses are to keep them safe from foxes. All the grass has died so its just bare ground and over winter this area can get really muddy which is obviously not very good for them and makes it very hard/impossible to keep really clean.

I am considering laying down some hardwood woodchips to hopefully help keep it dryer and provide a bit more stimulation for them. It's quiet a large area I would have to do so so am I a little worried about the amount of maintenance that would be needed. If its something that would need taking out and replacing regularly then it might not be an option .

I've read you can spray it down with a hose? Might be a silly question but does this mean taking it up and rinsing it (like how you would wash something in a colander)?! Or do you just stand there and spray it with a hose? And what about ground sanitising powder, is that enough to keep it hygienic? Having this many chickens means a LOT of poo builds up very quickly in that area and if I had woodchips down i wouldn't be able to rake it up as i usually do.

And drainage, will I still have to deal with big muddy wet patches or will it absorb it all?

Lots of questions I know! Any advice woild be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

[SallyintNorth]

Years ago we experimented with the best surface for just such a situation.  This was in wet Exmoor.  We found wood chippings to be useless in every trial we did, but bark chippings worked much better.  In our case, the best solution was :

• create a cover for a wider area around the house : we used onduline on wooden legs, but a decent tarp or piece of tin would work just as well
• wood shavings under straw inside the house, cleaned out once a week and topped up if needed in between times
• straw under bark chippings around the house in the under cover area, more bark chippings scattered as needed throughout the winter
• bark chippings, fairly deep, for 10 feet or so on the main routes in and out of the covered area.  Recovered as needed through the winter

That worked for us but we didn't have a massive flock.  If I wanted to achieve similar with a bigger flock, or somewhere even wetter (like Cumbria  ), I think I would try pea gravel under the bark chippings.

ETA  I don't know that we ever explicitly tested hardwood chippings, and it's possible we only ever used soft wood chippings.  I don't think we thought about that.  The mill we got them from made a lot of fence posts and gates, and the bark was of a larch type, I think, so it's possible we didn't test hardwood chippings, and might have got different results if we had 

[Julia1521]

I like the idea of creating a cover over the houses and putting bark around that area as appose to covering the whole area. This might be a good way for me to test it and see how I go this year without committing to covering the whole area in case it doesn't work. Then if I find it works well I could do the rest of the pen.

However I have read that bark isn't great because aspergillus fungus likes to grow on it. When you say you found wood chippings to be useless what did you mean by that?

And thank you for the suggestion about pea gravel I think that could be a good idea as well!

[doganjo]

I only have four hens now, but before I moved in September I had 11 hens and half a dozen ducks with a duck pond that they were in and out of all the time.  So parts of teh ground could get quite muddy. They were housed in a brick garage at night with softwood chippings on the floor.  Outside, the ground was covered in hardcore, left to seed itself with weeds, and grass - which they enjjoyed.  The hardcore kept the  ground in good condition, and they could go into the gargae at any time they wished.
It all worked well in all weathers.

Now I just have a pen on grass but it's on a slight slope.  After 3 months of having the hens it is already a bit soggy so i'm a bit wary of slipping in winter and wondering what to do next.  They live in a rabbit hutch with fresh sawdust bedding - it's not very fine sawdust so no breathing issues( as yet).  I'm thinking weed fabric and pea gravel with a wooden bar at the bottom end to prevent losing the gravel outside the run.  But I'm also thinking of covering the whole run with a tarpaulin - which I have already.

Will be interested in what you go with Julia

[alang]

Sorry to jump on and hijack the thread a little. Has anyone here ever used (or know of being used), the recycled rubber chippings designed for chicken runs? I read a report about them years ago in CSM saying they are washable and re-usable.

[chrismahon]

Don't use the recycled rubber chippings Alang. They are shredded tyres and can contain pieces of very sharp high tensile steel wire. Obviously that will be very bad for chickens feet, which are soft underneath and easily injured.

[Eve]

We’ve played around with this over the years. The system we have now we’ve had in place for 7 years and I’d never do it differently anymore as we have the cleanest, driest and most hygienic run.




The most important element I have found is to put 1/2” galvanised mesh on the ground before putting a thick layer of bark / bedding down.
We used really thick mesh as we wanted it to be predator proof, too (the sides are also covered in mesh) Just don’t use the very thin stuff. Anchor it down with metal pegs (the landscape fabric type pegs).




It must be galvanised mesh with 1/2” holes, not 1” holes or 1/2x1”, size matters here and it needs to be small. This prevents whatever you have added on the floor as bedding to become part of the ground as instead the bedding will just lay on top of the mesh.


If you don’t put the mesh down, whatever you put down will get incorporated in the mud & pooh, and your ground level with increase (an issue around edges and if your roof is covered) and the ground will just be as slippery and a disgusting layer of wet pooh, as if the bark was never even there.


If you use mesh with larger holes, the bark will slip through.




The mesh also means you can easily scoop up the used bedding after a few months (and all the pooh with it!), put it in the wheelie bin, and put fresh bedding in the run.
So much more hygienic!




Last but not least: a thick layer of bedding, 5-10cm, means the birds can scratch endlessly, which is so important to them. They won’t get their nails caught in the mesh or anything (obviously you need to finish the edges nicely), we’ve used this for years with great success. They only scratch the top layer of the bedding.




We use Laysoft as bedding as it’s inexpensive and much smaller than bark, my chickens love it. It rests on top of the mesh and gets replaced every few months in summer in a bit more often in winter. It deals very well with the rain, never becomes compacted, is never slippery not even in the wettest of winters.




The mesh was costly but once in place should last decades (we used the really thick stuff and under the bedding it still looks like new 7 years on).




Our largest run is nearly 50 square metres and is partially roofed at full height so that we can stand up in it. I can post a few pictures if you like, like I said the mesh was costly but the easy of use you get out of it outweighs the disadvantage of the cost massively, especially if you divide the cost by the number of years it’ll be in place 

[doganjo]

Can you post photos please - the mesh, the bedding and photos of it in situ.  It all sounds very good.  I like the 'every few months' bit best 

[alang]

+1 for pics please Eve

[Eve]

This is the mesh inside one of our runs the first time we did it; this was a combination of the expensive really tough mesh and cheap thin mesh, hence why know *not* to use the thin stuff!

[Eve]

This is inside the big run. It’s 3.5 x 14 metres, made of heras panels, with a tarpaulin roof supported by acroprops. There’s now also an extra panel in the middle with a door built in, so that we have two 3.5 x 7 metre sections.

For each half, we use 6 or 7 bags of Laysoft. The birds spend more time in one half than the other, where they spend the most time we replace the bedding every 2-3 months, in the other half less regularly.

[Eve]

Same run

[Eve]

This is the problem with thin mesh: where you’ve cut it, the threads will bend, then strands loosen. Plus it’ll just be too flimsy. On the thick mesh, the edges where you’ve joined two pieces will stay as they are, so as long as it’s nicely flat on the ground you’re good.


I used a bolt cutter to cut the mesh and hog rings to link the various pieces together. I had to cover the whole run because of stoats, the tough mesh on the floor and sides, lighter mesh on the roof (as otherwise the weight of the mesh would have made the whole thing collapse, it’s incredibly heavy - which also means that no storm will ever manage to move my run, not even an inch!  ).

[Julia1521]

Thanks Eve for you suggestion and the photos, it seems like a really good idea!

What sort of maintenance does it require (other than changing it every few months)? Do you need to poo pick or hose it down, anything like that? Also do you think it would be possible to just add fresh bedding on top of the old stuff instead of taking it all out every few months. I only ask because it is a pretty large area that I want to cover so it would be a lot of work. Finally, do you think it's hardy enough to stand up to a lot of rain? At the moment none of the run is covered and over the winter we get a lot of rain where I'm from.

Thanks again!

[Eve]

Hi Julia,


No maintenance whatsoever! 


Because the mesh rests on top of the ground and the bedding on top of the mesh, it doesn’t get mixed in with mud.
And Laysoft is essentially chopped up bits of wooden pallets (no splinters, don’t worry!) so when it rains it gets wet... then just dries again! It doesn’t become a mulch or sticky or anything. It darkens over time, so the lovely pale wood colours turns into woodland-path colour, but that’s all.
We pay just over £5 for a bag of Laysoft, it’s horse bedding and we get it from a feed / equestrian store.
It doesn’t need washing or anything, you just leave it in place for 2-3 months or maybe more depending on the number of birds per square meter. One end of our run is more popular than the other so gets refreshed more regularly.


We used to pooh pick religiously with a bucket and rubber gloves, and top up the bedding when there wasn’t enough of it left (since, well, you don’t just pick up pooh when pooh picking - my husband in particular used to scoop up rather generous handfuls, bless him). The contents of the pooh-buckets went into the wheelie bin which was dutifully put out for collection each week.
We then changed to not picking up at all but replacing the whole lot in one go every few months.
One half of our big run, about 25 square metres, takes an hour with two people using a large rubber tub and oversized dustpan, it fills more than 2 wheelie bins but what doesn’t fit in the bins we put along the outside of the run to smother the stinging nettles (not very successfully  ).


It’s perfect to deal with rain!! Half my run is not covered and over the last few weeks we’ve had these torrential downpours yet the bedding, although wet, is free draining since the mesh has the gaps.
No slipping or sliding, no puddles!


The one thing I wouldn’t advocate, regardless of the type of bedding, covered or not, is the ‘deep bedding’ system: putting fresh bedding on top of old. There are so many bacteria in the old bedding, I really wouldn’t want to leave that there - there’s only so much the worms etc can deal with. There are some who prefer the deep bedding system but I prefer a full clean out every few months, much more hygienic that way. Tip: if you clean it out when it’s dry (as opposed to after a heavy downpour) it’s much lighter work (literally), too.


I love it, as you can tell, it’s low maintenance plus back-friendly. The chickens love it, too, as they can scratch all they want. The initial outlay was high because of the mesh, but spread over 20 years or whatever it’s perfectly justifiable.  [size=78%] [/size][/size][size=78%] [/size]
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