Dried grass as coop bedding

I often experiment with various types of bedding in my chicken coops. I prefer wood shavings simply because they're convenient to buy and easy to store before use, but I have been known to use leaves, hay, straw and even shredded newspaper in my coops. Three years ago I decided to find uses for grass clippings and chicken coop bedding was one of the options I discovered. 

Unfortunately you can't just cut the grass and dump it in the coop. It'll get moldy. You can dump fresh cut grass in the run for the chickens to dig through and they will love it! It needs to be outside where it's exposed to good air flow to help it dry out though. 

There's not enough air flow inside a chicken coop, so to use it as bedding it needs dried out first. It's not like it's a difficult process, it just takes time and a dry, hot day.

Which chicken bedding should you use?

When it comes to the stuff laying on the floor of your chicken coop you would think that it doesn't matter all that much. Trust me, it does. Choosing a chicken coop bedding can depend a lot on your particular situation. Throughout the years I have tried: wood shavings, sand, dry leaves, dry grass, straw, hay and shredder paper in my chicken coops. They do not all perform the same way!

When choosing a chicken coop bedding you'll need to consider the size of your coop, weather, coop placement and your chicken population. A large coop could be expensive to fill with wood shavings or sand, even more expensive of it's packed with chickens and the bedding needs changed regularly. Plus, not every material works in every climate.

For example, a few years back sand had a sudden surge in popularity as coop bedding among chicken keepers. Unfortunately if you have a coop and covered run in a shady area like I do, sand  does not stay dry. In fact, once it's wet it pretty much never dries out. 

Wet sand sitting on the coop floor and against the walls of the run causes wood to mold and rot. Now I know people who use sand and it works great for them, but their coops are in sunnier locations so the sand stays dry. It did not work well for me though and that coop was completely destroyed from wood rot.

How deep litter method works in chicken coops

I only clean my chicken coop once a year. Yes, you read that right. ONCE a YEAR. The best part though, is that my coop doesn't smell. At all! In fact, by the time I clean my coop all the bedding and chicken poop are so broken down, it's like shoveling dust.

When I first got my chickens, I cleaned the coop every 2 weeks. It wasn't exactly my favorite chore, but I chalked it up to one of those things I had to do and handled it. Then I discovered the deep litter method in a chicken forum discussion. Game changer. 

I've been using the deep litter method in my chicken coops for about 7 years now and it's the best thing that's happened to coop cleaning ... like, ever!

The deep litter method is exactly what it sounds like ... letting the coop litter get deep. In order to do that you don't clean it out from summer to spring. Just keep adding more every few weeks and stirring it up so it dries out and breaks down faster. Every week, add a little more litter and mix again. 

The chickens dig around in it and mix it too, so that helps the whole process. 

Can I catch Histoplasmosis from chickens?

Today I want to talk about an illness that you can get from keeping chickens, but you've probably never heard of it. It's called histoplasmosis and you can get it from breathing in the spores of a fungus (Histoplasma capsulatum ) found in bird or bat droppings.

Yes it's all birds, not just chickens. However since keeping chickens entail things like cleaning the coop which stirs up chicken poop and bedding dust, you have a higher chance of catching histoplasmosis from your chickens then from random wild birds. 

As you clean the coop you stir up these spores in the chicken poop and they become airborne, and you can then breathe them into your lungs.

Now before anybody panics, most people who contract histoplasmosis from chickens will have no or very few symptoms. In fact, many people that do contract histoplasmosis will think they have a mild cold or the flu. 

Only about 10% of the people that contract​ histoplasmosis will develop serious eye or lung problems.

Related reading: Ocular Histoplasmosis, the bird droppings disease from Mother Earth news.

Using straw as coop bedding

I haven't talked about chicken coop bedding lately so I think it's about time that we talked about it again. We've already discussed using fall leaves and shredded newspaper, so this time I want to talk about using straw in the chicken coop. Straw is the first tier of cost when it comes to bedding. 

Leaves and old newspapers are free obviously, with straw or hay being next in cost and wood shavings and sand being the most expensive of them all (which is why I saved those for last!) 

Around here I can get straw bales for between $2-4 each, all year round. Even with all 5 coops going, I can refill them all for under $10. That's definitely a price I can live with!

6 Ways to dispose of coop bedding

This time of year we go through a lot of bedding in our chicken coops! Not only is our population at its yearly peak but with summer rains we're often shoveling out clean coop litter simply because it's wet. We use wood shavings in some coops, but hay and straw in others. That can add up to a lot of stinky bedding to get rid of. 

The coop litter situation gets real bad in the spring when it's time to clean out the coops that use the deep litter method. Those only get cleaned out once a year, but that's a lot of dirty bedding! 

Add the smaller coops and brooders to that and you can see I have lots and lots of poopy coop litter to get rid of. 

So how do you get rid of all that chicken poop?

How to Dispose of Coop Litter

1) Compost dirty coop litter

Dispose of the chicken poop by putting it in the compost pile. It's full of both the browns (litter like wood shavings) and the greens (poop) you need to build a good compost, so into the compost bin it goes! With the right additions you'll have black gold in no time. 

Plus the chickens will start digging through for anything they missed and turn it for you.

Here's How to compost chicken poop from Hobby Farms.

2) Dispose of coop litter in the garbage can 

Be polite, bag it up so the retrieval guy doesn't get covered. For very small coops or flocks that live in the city, this litter disposal method might be the best option. Reuse your feed bags to bag up the litter for 2 reasons...

You already have them and don't have to buy garbage bags
Feed bags are really sturdy and can be really loaded up without ripping. 

3) Sell old coop litter/chicken manure 

Gardeners will pay for chicken fertilizer even if they have to compost it themselves. Believe it or not, lots of folks are doing it and boy was I surprised to find that out! Advertise it in local farm groups, online bulletin boards or hang signs on bulletin boards at garden centers. Stick it in empty feed bags and sell it by the bag.

Using shredded newspaper as coop bedding

Over the years I have tried various types of bedding in my chicken coops. Usually I stick with wood shavings but I have been known to use leaves, hay or straw as bedding in my coops from time to time. A few months back I came across a forum topic discussing coop litter and several people mentioned using shredded newspaper as coop bedding. It was supposed to be absorbent and easy to compost after coop cleaning.

I decided to do some research and give it a try. It wasn't difficult, just shred the newspaper and throw it in the coop. It was free. It was easy.....but how did it work?

Using shredded newspaper in the chicken coop

While newspaper is generally 'free' (what else are you gonna do with it after you read it?) the shredder certainly isn't and depending on what size coop you're filling you do run the risk of burning up a shredder. To prevent this I shredded paper for about 5 minutes a few times a day till I got enough paper for my coop. 

I only used the regular newspaper part, not the shiny ad papers. I also used some regular shredded paper like bills and such. 

I chose the d'Uccle coop for this experiment. It's not terribly large which I thought was a good idea in case it failed miserably. I covered the coop floor with about 2" of shredded paper. As the days went by it packed down and I would add more from time to time. 

The chickens had no problems walking in or turning the paper coop bedding. The coop didn't smell and when the paper litter got wet, it quickly dried out. 

I did see them eat a piece or two of shredded paper, but didn't notice any problems from it. 

Using leaves as coop bedding

Every fall I rake up the dried leaves and throw some in the runs for the chickens/guineas. They dig through them happily, finding bugs and tiny bits of grasses to eat. Sadly I can only get dry leaves once a year, but since they are absolutely free I never waste a chance to use them when I can. 

This year I decided to use them as bedding in the largest chicken coop I have. Technically it's the guinea coop, same idea though. 

This October I did my traditional fall clean out when I get rid of all the bedding from the last year. I use the deep litter method and it's been working great in this coop. The deep litter method requires quite a bit of bedding to start with, so all I did was fill the coop with dry leaves. I raked some up into bags to add in once the chickens broke up the leaves a bit. That's it! 

So far so good. I really like using leaves in the coop as well as the run. It's cheaper, easy & the chickens seem to love it. Read on for all the details....

Finding mites in the poultry bedding

I'm going to start by saying that I don't actually know if they are wood mites...that's just what I was told and it certainly looks like it from the pictures online. They don't look like the chicken mites I've had the misery of knowing, but thankfully I've only dealt with the Red Mites and only once. 

These bugs do look like some of the poultry mites I've seen in pictures though, so they very well could be. Read on to see why it's so confusing!

Mites in the poultry coop bedding

This story starts a few weeks back. I reached into the nest boxes in the silkie house and noticed there were some little bugs on the eggs.

Tiny little brown things, barely bigger than a speck. Gross, right? Just a few in the bedding, but when I checked every bird every where I could, I found nothing. 

So I decided to empty the nest box bedding into the fire pit. More on this here: 6 Ways to Dispose of Coop Litter. I wiped them out, put a layer of DE in and more wood shavings and called it done.

Days went by without another sighting, admittedly I kept checking the birds not the bedding.

How to dry out a wet chicken coop

We had a whopper of a rain storm last week. During the worst of it there was an active tornado alert and what looked like a river running through our yard. Unfortunately, at the bottom of the yard is our main coop. It houses roughly 20 poultry. 10 standard size chickens, 10 guineas...and on this occasion...7 chicks. Our whole yard is on a slant so as you can imagine, lots of water made its way into the coop. 

The rain came so fast and furiously even the French drain failed and we were left with a huge mess to clean up. 

First thing I did was scrape all the water out the door using a small shovel (and my feet...but hey, I was desperate!) Then I pushed the wet bedding onto the rubber mat that covers the back half of the coop. I let it spend the night back there....it was too late at that point, but the real work was to come in the morning! 

Why the deep litter method never works for me!

The deep litter method is my absolute favorite coop bedding method. It's easy to do, very low maintenance and perfect for winter. Except, the deep litter method never works for me in the big coop! I can use it with no problem in all of my other coops and it works perfectly. It's just the one coop I have a problem with, and it's a very simple reason why.

It all started when I read about the deep litter method on a very busy chicken forum. What is the deep litter method you ask? It's not changing the coop litter all winter long. Who doesn't like that idea, right? So I did some research and learned more about it on Mother Earth news and got started.

It sounds simple but it is just a little bit more involved: add DE, add wood shavings and mix often. DE= food grade diatomaceous earth. Every week, add a little more litter, some DE and mix again. The chickens mix it too so that helps the whole process.