The pros and cons of chicken coop bedding
Josh Wilder: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast. At Mother Earth News for 50 years and counting, we’ve been dedicated to conserving the planet’s natural resources while helping you conserve your financial resources in this podcast. We host conversations with experts in the fields of sustainability, homesteading, natural health, and more to share all about how you can live well wherever you are in a way that values both people and our Mother Earth.
This episode is brought to you by Home Fresh Poultry Feeds. A superior quality of life begins with superior quality ingredients. Give your chickens the complete and balanced nutrition they need with Home Fresh Poultry Feeds. Home Fresh Poultry Feeds are made with just the right mix of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.
For every stage of life, you’ll find a starter, a grower, and extra egg layer, and one for better feathers. Visit HomeFreshFeeds.com/Friends now and get a coupon for $5 off. Provide chickens at any age with the right feed. They need to stay happy and healthy. Visit HomeFreshFeeds.com/Friends for [00:01:00] more.
Kenny Coogan: Welcome to Mother Earth News Audio. I’m Kenny Coogan, reading “The Pros and Cons of Chicken Coop Bedding”, written by me. This article originally appeared in Backyard Poultry Magazine. Enjoy.
The Pros and Cons of Chicken Coop Bedding
With lots of chicken coop bedding options out there, it can be overwhelming. I contacted Marissa Byrum, the Director of Communications and the General Store Manager for Shell’s Feed and Garden Supply to find out more. Byrum has a lot of great insight into the financial and sustainability aspects behind chicken coop bedding and which types possess the greatest potential for pathogen problems.
Best shavings for chickens
“The most common bedding sold for chickens is pine bedding because it is cheap, relatively abdorbent, and doesn’t really have too [00:02:00] many adverse effects on chickens”, Byrum explains. “A lot of what is best for chickens or safest depends on how often you clean. Pine bedding can be controversial depending on what research you read. Pine bedding dust can be toxic and, of course, as with any shaving, if you leave it unclean for too long, it’ll generate mold and bacteria and hold onto ammonia. Cleaning frequently is always required.”
“Pine and any of the hardwoods can cause a respiratory problem,” Byrum explains, If the chickens are cooped up in a place where the shavings were just put down and the door is closed immediately, they’ll breathe it in and that can cause respiratory problems.”
Just because pine bedding is the most common bedding sold, doesn’t mean it’s the best.
” We know that even for humans, if you’re breathing in cedar for a long time, you can get an irritated nose and [00:03:00] throat, or at least I do, so it’s best to avoid the dust particles.”
Hay vs. Straw
The second most common bedding material sold for chicken coops is hay and straw according to Byrum. “They are very cheap and soft, so chickens like that. You shouldn’t put hay for chicks in brooders because they can eat it. Same with pine shavings. The little baby shouldn’t have too much of that because if they eat it, it can be toxic.”
While hay and straw are good at absorbing moisture, they’re both bad at releasing that moisture, which means frequent cleaning to avoid accumulating ammonia. Byrum says that chopped straw is better than hay for multiple reasons. “They both harbor pathogens, but chopped straw has low dust and is more absorbent. During the compressing of the bales, a lot of dust can get sucked out.”
Newspaper and cardboard
“You get a [00:04:00] lot of product for your money because it is compressed,” Byrum adds. “On the flip side, you have to clean it more often. Six of one half a dozen of the other. I hate to use an egg pun.”
For baby chicks, Byrum recommends newspaper. “Most newspapers are printed with plant based ink. Don’t use glossy paper. Just use the regular paper. I would recommend using flat newspaper on the bottom and then adding shredded paper on the top so the chicks can get some traction. In our brooders, we had grates that allowed the waste to pass through to the newspaper. But most people use brooders made out of boxes or totes. I wouldn’t recommend any type of bedding that’s too thick, or else you will lose your chicks in it,” she jokes.
“PitMoss Roost is a pre consumer shredded paper that’s very easy to clean up”, Byrum says. “You just pick up the clump where the waste [00:05:00] is, and then you can replace the clump. It’s more expensive than some traditional bedding. Both Newspaper and Pitmoss compost very easily.”
On Pitmoss’s website, they claim that it lasts four times longer than pine shavings and significantly reduces odor and promotes healthier birds. The composition of the material is akin to hamster bedding.
While Byrum hasn’t seen it locally for sale, she’s seen some recommendations for cardboard bedding. “Cardboard cuts are basically little squares of cardboard that are offcuts for making boxes and things like that. Virtually no dust, and the chickens don’t eat it. While it isn’t that common, it works pretty well.”
Hemp and Hulls
Hemp is another chicken bedding alternative. However, according to Byrum, it isn’t easily available and it’s more expensive. The positive is that you don’t need to [00:06:00] use as much.
“Hemp has low mold levels and you can use it as deep litter. It doesn’t tend to hold on the ammonia for too long if you have proper circulation.” Hemp bedding is the leftover stalks and dried leaves. The manufacturer used the top part of the plant for clothing or paper product. It looks like straw. It’s definitely one of the better options. You can use it in the nesting boxes, or in the run of the coop.”
Rice hulls, peanut hulls, and corncobs aren’t ideal for chicken bedding. They aren’t as absorbent, and since they’re an organic material, you have to keep on top of it and make sure the area is clean.
“High mold levels and high ammonia retention make them not the best”, Byron explains. “Unless you just happen to come across a really great deal, I would stick with the other options.”
Sawdust is another cheap and readily available option. “If people [00:07:00] have been milling treated wood, you definitely don’t want that. But if it’s just from processing raw pine trees, it’s almost like plain shavings, but obviously smaller and dustier.”
Sawdust doesn’t compost well and is very absorbent and lightweight. ” It does insulate”, Byrum says, “but again the dust and the possibility of mold are there too. The biggest killers in chickens in general are respiratory issues, whether it is bird flu or any number of chicken diseases. Most of the respiratory issues happen in the chicken’s face, so you don’t want to compromise the air they’re breathing.”
Don’t irritate the respiratory system by choosing the wrong type of chicken bedding.
” For the nesting boxes you could really use any of the products we mentioned. Chopped straw and hay, or other products including PittMoss, will all insulate the coop,” Byrum says.
When to Compost
” In coops and runs, you can use [00:08:00] PItMoss in a deep litter method,” Byrum notes. “It’ll compost in place, which is nice, and you don’t have to worry about it being too messy. If you need to rake it all out and replace everything — which I recommend doing quarterly it can go on directly to the compost and you don’t have to worry about pre composting since it’s just paper.”
If you’re composting plain newspaper, Byrum recommends adding some green material to make it compost faster.
“For typical wood shavings, it can take up to a year to fully compost. Some people can do it faster if the compost is hot, but it still takes a little more effort. Old, soiled hay and straw are not great for composting,” Byrum says. “There isn’t much of a point in composting them because the molds can survive a wide range of temperatures. For me it has a pretty poor compostability, unless you’re going to keep it separate from your other compost, it takes a [00:09:00] long time.”
Sand in the chicken run
The medium grade sand is probably the best type of bedding for the coop area, as it doesn’t hold liquid, doesn’t harbor pathogens like mold, and it’s very easy to clean, Byrum says.
“A lot of people try to use play sand, but there’s a problem with the smaller grain silicates. Silicate pneumoconiosis is a disease that chickens can get from play sand due to the tiny particles entering the lungs.”
Medium grade sand is not the cheapest, but once you put it down, it’ll be there for a while. You’d be saving money long term because you’re not having to replace it often. Sand also regulates the temperature year round.
Choosing the right coop and run products depend on where you live, what you can spend, and how you’ll deal with it when soiled. Luckily, there are a lot of options.
Thanks [00:10:00] for listening. Kenny Coogan, that’s me, earned a master’s degree in global sustainability and co hosts the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast, which can be enjoyed at https://www.motherearthnews.com/podcast/. I also created and host the TV show Florida’s Flora and Fauna with conservationist Kenny Coogan, which will air in the summer of 2025.
To learn more about that program, visit https://floridasfloraandfauna.com/.
Josh Wilder: Thank you to our sponsors, Home Fresh Poultry Feeds. The superior quality of life begins with superior quality ingredients. Give your chickens the complete and balanced nutrition they need with Home Fresh Poultry Feeds. Home Fresh Poultry Feeds are made with just the right mix of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients.
For every stage of life, you’ll find a starter, a grower, and extra egg layer and one for [00:11:00] better feathers. Visit HomeFreshFeeds.com/Friends now and get a coupon for $5 off. Provide chickens at any age with the right feed they need to stay healthy and happy. Visit HomeFreshFeeds.com/Friends for more.
Alyssa Warner: Okay, so let’s talk about the pros and cons of different kinds of chicken coop, bedding. Do you mind if we do a little bit of round robin? We’ll go me, Audra, and then Kenny. And can we just say what we put in as chicken bedding? I live here in Kansas. It’s pretty hot in the summer and fairly mild in the winter.
And I alternate between pine shavings and straw depending on the weather. Audrey, what’s in your chicken coop?
Audra Trosper: We always use pine shavings because I detest straw as far as trying to clean it and the dust or whatever from it. I just don’t do straw very often, even when it gets really cold.
The girls came through it no problem, even when winter tried to kill us earlier this year. I usually use that. I did see one lady, though, I do wanna share this one because it was a really cool [00:12:00] idea. So she has the poop board and she gets the chicken feed bags, they’re a plasticy feel, at least a lot of ’em are.
So she cuts ’em open, she lays those on the poop board, and then the next day she will pull off the dirty ones, lay fresh ones up there, dump the dirty ones in her compost bin, clip them to the fence and hose them off, let them dry in the sun, and then folds them away. And then she just switches those out every day.
And she has not a lot of, she has used the sand in there. The base of the coop, which I thought was a cool idea, and I thought that might not be sound bad to try out, but for now I just use pine shavings. It’s just what I’ve always used. So
Kenny Coogan: historically for my ducks and chickens, I have put several layers of newspaper down, which I get for free.
And then because of where I’m located, I use hay. I don’t use straw. I use hay because hay is cheaper in my region. And it’s just easy to use. The feed store person [00:13:00] knows that I, and all of my neighbors are using hay, which is supposed to be for food as bedding. And they even say that sometimes they can’t get straw in my part of Florida because of supply chain issues.
So that’s what we use and then we compost it, which I think we’re gonna talk about a little bit later. For pigeon coops, you can use dust-free kitty litter and then you can spot clean it. And if they accidentally eat it, it’s okay because it’s just like a clay material and yeah, that’s what I’m using.
Alyssa Warner: Awesome. So it sounds like it’s mostly up to availability for most of us. I live in a city and I gotta get mine from a feed store.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. My pine shavings come from a feed store. From a farm store.
Kenny Coogan: And the article I also wrote about using this pit moss brand, [00:14:00] let’s say peat alternative. So you can, they have one brand.
One line that’s, you can use it as a food alternative for gardening, and it’s pre-consumer cardboard products. So if you think about, if you buy a cardboard box, they punch out these little rectangles so you can fold the box up. And maybe five years ago or less, a college student said, what are we doing with all of these rectangles that are just piling up?
They shredded them and it’s like Guinea pig bedding or geral bedding, and now they’re advertising it as like a chicken roost bedding. That’s one line. And then the other one is that peat alternative that I mentioned, and I was able to get it from my local feed supply to test it out. I got a couple of bales.
I used it in the chicken nest and I also used it in the chicken coop. It worked great. But for the [00:15:00] number of birds that I had, it would be cost prohibitive.
Audra Trosper: Now, supposedly coffee, ground bedding you can buy, it’s a brand you can buy and it is, it’s been processed in whatever way. So it’s not toxic to the chickens anymore if they happen to eat it, which most don’t, but, and apparently it will actually clump up almost like kitty litter in a way, if you will, or whatever.
So it’s easier to pick it out. Like you could just go in there and sift through it with a. With a sifter thing and get the poop and stuff out, and it smells like coffee grounds all the time. I do have some, I have not actually gotten up the nerve to actually use it yet because I can only think if I don’t like it, the cleanup is going to be a disaster and I think it’s gonna track something fierce, like stick to shoes, whatever, and just, I can just see it getting everywhere and maybe somebody who watches this has used it and can clarify on those bits, but I’m afraid to use it.
Alyssa Warner: Iwhere, this is a good time to mention if you comment something on our [00:16:00] YouTube page, if you comment something underneath this article, we read it. So if you have any comments, do not hesitate. Please leave them down below. We love to hear it. If it’s a really important question or really important comment, we’ll give you a shout out.
Kenny Coogan: Absolutely. And Audra, these are spent coffee grounds.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. Yeah, they’ve been like utilized already and they’re spent and it’s like a way to recycle the coffee grounds and supposedly you can, if you can like just keep picking it out so you don’t use as much of it once you, like your initial purchase is expensive to get the right amount in there.
But then after that it’s not so bad. So if anybody watches this and uses that vetting, I would love to hear what it, how it tracks and stuff. I have heard it’s not good to use for chicks because they might actually eat too much of it. ’cause they’re. They’re chicks. But once they get to be adult birds, it’s really not a big issue.
There’s like virtually no dust with it and all kinds of stuff. So just a [00:17:00] that’s interesting. I’m just, I’m really afraid to use it. So
Alyssa Warner: I wonder how that would, if you’re composting, how that would affect your compost, because I know I’ve heard conflicting feedback about composting
Audra Trosper: coffee ground.
Kenny Coogan: I have a friend who’s a long time Mother Earth News subscriber and she does not like the taste of coffee, but she goes to the coffee stores and gets the spent bags for compost. And she says if you put just like a little shot glass of coffee grounds in your car was smell very nice.
I am.
Alyssa Warner: The I’m a little bit of a coffee snob. I might drink way too much coffee. Yeah. Coffee is the best. I had a job at a kitchen store when I was 18 and I still have that espresso machine. And Grindr buy good products and they’ll last you forever. But I have coffee galore and I put it in my fridge instead of baking soda.
Not spent grounds, fresh [00:18:00] grounds fresh ground. But that one I actually learned from a Turkish friend of mine. She said they put little tiny shot glasses of coffee everywhere. Interesting.
Kenny Coogan: Does your car smelled like coffee?
Alyssa Warner: Mine does not. My fridge does though.
Audra Trosper: For me, the best way to get smell of coffee in your car is to drink coffee.
Alyssa Warner: Bring a fresh cup every time you go, then technically yes. Kenny, my car does smell like coffee. This is my support cup of coffee. What do you do with I’m from Hawaii, of course. I drink coffee,
Audra Trosper: Coffee all the time. I got really sick this last winter and ever since then, regular coffee, I can’t drink it.
It does not taste right, no matter. But cappuccino tastes great still, so I’m drinking cappuccino.
Alyssa Warner: Yep. Do you Audra, I have this question written down for you, but this is just a general question. How do you guys manage dust?
It sounds like, Kenny, you might not have a ton because you’re using mostly paper, but you do have. Hay in there. And Audrey, you’ve got [00:19:00] pine. Do you guys notice a lot of dust?
Audra Trosper: My biggest thing is I will not buy the little bitty, the fine pine shavings because that is just dust City. It’s horrible. If you get the larger flakes, it’s not near as dusty.
It’s not near as bad. And then like I always, when I clean, I put the container right outside the co door. So that when I dump it in there, any dust that poofs up, it gets carried away by the breeze instead of hanging out in the coop with me while I’m shoveling. But it’s, you have a lot less dust if you use the bigger flakes, if you use those tiny flakes, it’s horrible.
Absolutely awful.
Kenny Coogan: Yeah. Alfalfa and grass hay definitely have mold and dust in them. The way that my system is, the coop is detached from. Like they’re nighttime quarter, so they have to walk free range for about 20 feet. So when they’re out in their coop or when they’re out in the yard, that’s when I’m cleaning their night quarters.
And then I just get the big flakes of [00:20:00] hay, spread ’em around, and the dust settles by the time they returned.
Audra Trosper: I can say there’s really, when you open, like you break open a big bag of those the nice large flakes there. There’s no dust when you’re spreading it around. There’s not much. And I use it for the goats too they take longer to break down, I think than hay though.
Hay breaks down in compost.
Alyssa Warner: Yeah. I feel like the most hazard from dust when I’m changing bedding is to me, ’cause there’s no chickens in that area when I’m changing it.
Audra Trosper: I wear an N95 mask when I’m cleaning the chicken house. I do not, yeah. I’m not gonna mess with that.
Alyssa Warner: Oh, I should switch. I have I do a lot of crafts resin crafting, so I’ve been using like my big mask, I should just swap it for an N95, that would be a lot less.
Audra Trosper: Honestly, I would almost rather have the big one.
Alyssa Warner: Yeah. Yeah. The construction mask with the two pads that you change out. Keeps the chemicals out of my lungs, but does not stop me from getting resonant in my hair.
Audra Trosper: And one time that I cleaned the chicken [00:21:00] house without it, I actually ended up ill within a day.
And it took me a little bit. Yeah I’m very careful about it. And I don’t know if it was just too much dust got in my lungs or what, but my body was not happy with me. So goat stalls, I clean without a mask. That’s not a problem. It’s quick, it’s easy. They don’t have near as much, chickens.
Produce dust, looks like bodily produced dust or something. It’s just everywhere. Goats don’t do that so well,
Alyssa Warner: When they’re molting because the whole chicken coop has this little tiny white flex in ’em. They just create
Audra Trosper: dust. They create dust. I think protein dust originated from, like the witch king first is the chicken or the egg, I think, which came first.
The chicken or the dust,
Kenny Coogan: if your chicken coop is. Solid with one side with mesh or if it’s all mesh or you know how much ventilation you have.
Audra Trosper: Oh, yeah. And good ventilation is really important in the coop. Definitely.
Alyssa Warner: Only time. We had probably the smallest coop between the three of us. I’ve just got a little bitty [00:22:00] coop in a small amount of chickens in a backyard.
Audra Trosper: Technically mine’s a backyard ’cause we are in town. It’s just a very large backyard.
Alyssa Warner: In town means different to you than to me though. I think Audra.
Audra Trosper: Okay. We don’t even have a single stoplight. We have some stops. We don’t even have the blinking light. We’re not even like radiators spring to the blinking light.
But, and we are completely surrounded by farmland and stuff but it is a town, it’s such a cute little town, like the perfect, like exact town square. It’s not like a regular just main street through. We actually have a really cute town square with the whole park and gazebo and it’s adorable.
So I go visit
Alyssa Warner: you one day, Audra.
Audra Trosper: Yeah it’s beautiful. I actually love our town square. And then the but yeah, we have a shed. We got one of those really nice sheds for the chicken. So it’s got the big human door. On one side and then it’s got their door going outside into their pin and it’s got lots of ventilation.
And the only time it didn’t have good ventilation was [00:23:00] during that period when Winter tried to kill us. And my husband actually put cardboard over their vents on the north because it was like I don’t know, negative a hundred or whatever it was during that time. Yeah, it got really cool, it felt like it, for sure it did.
And it was blowing and howling and well, and what I
Alyssa Warner: ended up doing was I just piled, ’cause I have a really small chicken coop. When I first bought this house, when I first moved out, this is the country to me. I know it’s a town. I know we’re in the city and I’m in the suburbs, but it feels like the middle of nowhere too.
A city girl like me. And I bought like a mail order chicken coop and it’s, it’s sized like this. And, but it was really easy to just, we covered it with garbage bags, dark colored garbage bags, and then we piled the snow all the way up and it was warm in there. Like the chickens weren’t even in the place where I thought they would be warm laying eggs.
They chose to go underneath where the snow had covered all play up and that’s where they were laying their eggs. ’cause it was, the warmest part was not the part they were supposed to be living in.
Audra Trosper: And actually [00:24:00] interestingly enough, because where the baby goats, where their shed is. Their door.
’cause we had to go in and out numerous times ’cause of bottles or whatever. And I think I’m probably the only goats, my only person whose goats had a fake fireplace during this time to keep them warm. And it did, it kept it about between 35 and 45 degrees in there, depending on the time of day even no matter how cold it got outside.
But once we got done in there, we would shut that door and it’s just like a storm door going into the shed. And we would actually kick snow a good ways up that door to completely block all of the. From coming through. It really made a huge difference in there. Snow is a great tool. It’s free this cold and this horrible.
At least we have the snow to help insulate things. Yes, snow is free insulation.
Alyssa Warner: Anyway,
Audra Trosper: it’s not what’s blowing across the road at a hundred miles an hour when you’re trying to drive
Alyssa Warner: it. That is true. That is not fun. That is not good. I was very grateful to be inside
Audra Trosper: that last blizzard that came through.
I was driving back from. I was playing, where are the lanes? Where’s the highway? At one point, so I [00:25:00] was driving so I could keep my driver’s side tires on the rumble strips in the center of the road because I couldn’t see the center of the road, but I could hear it if I got on the rumble. So I was pretty much driving on that.
And then at one point I had lost where the road was and the rumble strips were under my tires. And then I looked over and I was like, is that grass sticking up through the snow? Oh, I’m on the shoulder, the middle of the road. I was the. But you couldn’t see the road. And at one point these other pickups went the other direction and they lit up the road with their headlights really bad.
And it, it was just this big moving blanket, just all the way across me. There was no road. It didn’t exist. It was just like, okay. Yeah, I stayed home, took 35 miles an hour all the way home.
Alyssa Warner: Lucky me. Lucky me. I was home making a tiny little chicken igloo.
Is it necessary to make chicken dust bathing places for your chicken, or will they make those themselves?
Kenny Coogan: So I have [00:26:00] never created a dust bath for my chickens and I finally live in Florida where our land is all sand.
And what the chickens like to do is they go underneath the one foot overlay of the roof where the rain doesn’t hit it, and they go up next to the building and they create their own little. Sand baths you in the, I also free range them for most of their lives, but in their coop, I did pour some sand in which they thoroughly enjoyed when we had ’em locked in, in the evenings when we couldn’t supervise them.
But they would appreciate it if they are cooped in all the time, you can create a little sand, wood ash mixture or just use sand. Even if you give a mulch, eventually that mulch is gonna break down into fine dirt particles and they’ll also bath in that.
Audra Trosper: Or it’s just like to dig big holes and let’s [00:27:00] face it, it’s Western Kansas dirt is not something we’re lacking in they just tend to make their own.
Alyssa Warner: Yeah. Mine also like to do it right against my house, and now I have a trench that I have to fill in every year.
Kenny Coogan: Don’t be concerned. If you see a chicken with its head twisted backwards and their feathers are all disheveled, they’re probably just enjoying a.
Awesome.
Alyssa Warner: Anyway, but back to bedding. Kenny, I think this question’s for you. How can I effectively manage and compost chicken bedding particularly hay and dry? I know you said you use hay to minimize bacteria and pathogen risk and create cool compost.
Kenny Coogan: So composting is a widely used method for the treatment of animal waste. And I’ve used a three bin system made out of seven pallets, which have lasted me five to 10 [00:28:00] years. And I definitely wrote an entire article about this in countryside many years ago, which might have been five to 10 years ago.
And each of the three bins is around three feet by three feet, and it’s important to have a cover over the bins to maintain. Uniform moisture throughout the pile and minimize leaching. In Florida, maybe similar to Hawaii, we have seasonal. We have a seasonal rainy season where we have a thunderstorm every day at 5:00 PM for four months of the year.
So you don’t want all of the good nutrients that you wanna be using in your garden to leach from your compost pile. So that’s why you need to have a solid wood board or a plastic tarp. Over the three bins and a compost thermometer is recommended by almost every like extension office, but I have never used one.
What usually happens is the [00:29:00] compost pile eats the compost thermometer, and then I’m just, I don’t wanna be sticking my hand in that, so I just feel the compost to make sure it’s good. And the way that you do it is you’re gonna rake the litter from the coop and add it to the first bin. And you can be doing this like once a week, like a deep, clean method.
And this includes the chicken manure and the leaves and the straw, or the wood shavings. Or the wood chips that you’re using as bedding. And you want around one third or a quarter of the material to be that manure or grass clippings and vegetable and food scraps. And these are known as the greens and the nitrogen source.
Then the other two thirds to three quarters of it is gonna be the carbon source, which are the brown things, like the dead things, which are the wood shavings, cardboard, newspaper, and dead leaves. So once a week you’re gonna be adding stuff to that first bin, and after several [00:30:00] weeks making it like a lasagna or using the pitchfork and earning it, you’re going to have that first bin full, and then you’re not gonna really do anything to it for one or two weeks.
The temperature should be between 130 and 150. And if it’s not warm, if it’s not steaming, you can add more water to it or you can just mix it up more. And then all of this remember is covered and after maybe six weeks, so four weeks of you adding stuff, and then two weeks of you letting it leave it alone, you can move all of that to the second compartment.
Then you’re gonna start over In the first compartment, you’re gonna be adding more chicken manure and your wood shavings and your hay and things like that, and you just keep repeating. And eventually when you get to the third bin, it’ll be four to six months and all of that stuff will be broken down into beautiful.
It’s gonna look like beautiful dirt. [00:31:00] Soil and then you can dress your trees or your vegetable yard so you can sprinkle it on the top or you can mix it into your vegetable and that’s how you’re gonna be a closed system.
Alyssa Warner: Is there anything else that you put in there? So you said you put in chicken manure.
Can you also put in like scratch from your kitchen?
Kenny Coogan: Yeah, that’s the green. Third to a quarter is your manure and then your vegetable scraps and everybody says you don’t wanna be using like, oils, fats, meats, some of that’s for environment. Some of it’s because your compost that is not gonna get hot enough to break it down to be safe.
Alyssa Warner: And I’m sure, but you have another great podcast about biodigester, which is perfect for this other thing.
Kenny Coogan: Yeah. Yes, very good. I got my, listen to the podcast. I earned my master’s [00:32:00] degree in global sustainability during the pandemic, and one of like my main professors is a world renowned bio digester expert.
So I’ve visited his homestead where he has three or four. Different size bio digesters, and he wants everyone to have a biodigester. So we wrote an article about that for Mother Earth and then we also did a podcast about that. And he’s traveled literally all over the world, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, maybe South America, to teach people how to be safely composting, all those other things.
Alyssa Warner: It’s cool, and I now want my own little dragon.
Kenny Coogan: Yes, he calls ’em dragons because they,
Audra Trosper: I say I have occasionally buried a critter or two that died into the compost bin, but this is a compost bin. [00:33:00] It’s not going to be used for anything like gardening or anything for a couple of years. So it goes in there, it won’t come out for a while.
Kenny Coogan: And it just feels, yeah. Alyssa calls it a dragon because he calls it a dragon because it belches fire.
And then you can use that to heat up your cookware or warm your house. And then it also like farts out gas, which you could use for other things methane. And you could, yeah, you got a whole system going
Alyssa Warner: and it makes like compost juice.
Kenny Coogan: And then it also has this like liquid waste. So it’s like the dragon is peeing, burping, farting.
It’s like a little, you make a little organism.
Alyssa Warner: A little organism. It’s a lot interesting.
Kenny Coogan: Audra should be familiar. It’s like a ruminant system. You got, that’s what the, that’s what the container is when youre putting it all in. [00:34:00]
Audra Trosper: Okay. It’s like a.
Alyssa Warner: It’s a little, it’s like you make a giant tank that acts like a tummy and you put a starter in there
Kenny Coogan: or something, which can just be manu like animal manure.
Alyssa Warner: Yep. So cool. So cool. We’ll make sure to put links to that article and links to that podcast down below. ’cause everyone should learn about bio digesters. They’re so cool. Yeah. Especially if you’re already interested in compost. Yeah. Awesome. And I know we touched on this a little bit, but Audra, for folks on a budget, do you have any other ideas for cost effective strategies for turning recycled meth recycled materials into coop bedding?
Audra Trosper: That would be the chicken one. The chicken bag one?
Alyssa Warner: Yeah. Yes. The chicken bag. We’ll move that over here.
Audra Trosper: Okay. Yeah, that would be the, that’s probably one of your most cost effective, ’cause you’re literally already buying the chicken food, so you’re just reusing the bag, so it’s not costing you anything.
Alyssa Warner: I [00:35:00] love recycled chicken feedback or feedback. Any feedback projects. ’cause you already have it.
Audra Trosper: Yeah, I, one lady, she did some really pretty wallpaper in her chicken house with the bags. It was so pretty because she, she took that center part where you have all the pretty chickens and she made this really neat border all along in the chicken.
Alyssa Warner: That’s cute. That’s way more creative. I usually just use them to create shades for the chickens in the summer. But that’s way more cute and probably a little more long lasting.
Audra Trosper: I just thought it was like really adorable. It was in a chicken group I’m in on Facebook and I was just like, wow, that is really neat.
Alyssa Warner: Oh, last question. My last question is for Kenny. Since we’ve talked about all these different things about what to use for chicken bedding and what to use your chicken bedding and after it’s been soiled and spent how often should I be changing my chicken bedding?
Kenny Coogan: To [00:36:00] back up just a little bit, according to the USDA, you should be cleaning your equipment and your vehicles.
Soap and water before and after they come in contact with your flock. And this is especially important as we’re going into multiple years of having this horrible avian influenza. You should make sure that you’re spraying the tires and undercarriages of vehicles if you’re going like farm to farm, where contact with those in infectious agents is most likely to survive because germs can survive months or even years in those types of locations.
How often you clean and replace your bedding will depend on your poultry population. It’s gonna be different if you have five chickens living in a 20 by 10 coop or if you have 20 chickens living in that same area. So what I like to do is try to do a dry, clean method once a day up to. Once a week, [00:37:00] and that includes brushing or scraping or using a shovel to remove the manure from feathers.
And then you’re like spot cleaning it. You need to do this before you use a disinfectant as the disinfectant will not be able to penetrate or organic matter or cake time manure. And if you only have a few birds in a coop, you can do a spot cleaning daily and just remove the feathers. But after a week or two, you’re gonna need to do a wet clean.
And that’s where after you do your dry clean, you’re gonna scrub all the surfaces with water and a detergent. And the USDA recommends that you work from top to bottom and back to front to avoid contamination. And obviously this makes sense. But I worked at Zoona Crimes for about 12 years and you. We would get inspected by the USDA once a year, and they would always make sure that the [00:38:00] cleaning agents were on the bottom shelf or they were below the animal’s feed.
And obviously this also makes sense, but you might not have been aware of that. And same thing with you need to clean like the back of the coop before you clean the front of the coop, because if you’re doing it the opposite way, you’re going to be bringing in. Contaminants through the back and you’re, you’re not gonna be sanitizing what you think.
You’re gonna be sanitizing.
Audra Trosper: Kinda like when you’re Ming the kitchen floor, you start on one side.
Alyssa Warner: This isn’t just limited to folks who might come in contact with farm, even if you are, you just have chickens in your backyard. You wanna keep your animals who can also catch avian influenza safe like cats.
If you are a cat person it’s great to be sanitizing your shoes. We actually have a wonderful article about this that Kenny also wrote. We have a great discussion about how to make sure that you are [00:39:00] sanitizing your surfaces, your tools, your shoes before you return to your home. We have a great discussion on that audio article as well.
Kenny Coogan: A lot of people suggest using one fluid ounce of bleach in two gallons for doing those wet cleans in your coop. You do need to allow all the items to dry completely before adding the new litter, which would take, an hour or so. But if you have some fans, you could dry ’em up. So that’s what the experts and I recommend for the chicken coop.
And then for cleaning sand baths. Hopefully the chickens are not going the bathroom in the sand bath like they are in the chicken coop on a daily basis. So you may only need to clean the sand bath. Once a year or twice a year, you might also just need to top it off with some more sand.
Alyssa Warner: And I’m sure if you’re in a place where you’ve got a lot of ferals that you’re checking [00:40:00] any sand area for cat intruders, it is a big thing that we had to do back in Hawaii is always check any piles of sand to make sure you have no cat intruders.
Kenny Coogan: Yeah. The chickens might not be using the sand bath as a toilet, but the cats might be.
Alyssa Warner: My mom’s a preschool teacher. That was a big problem.
Audra Trosper: So that’s another area where poultry netting comes in handy over their coop or their run area is that you don’t end up with cats prowling in there. So
Alyssa Warner: do we have any last chicken bedding thoughts?
Have you guys ever tried something, some kind of chicken bedding that was just the worst, that was awful, that you’ll never touch again?
Kenny Coogan: I think this is from the last article that we stopped filming. Why? One thing that somebody else said, which I love is like chicken wire is not for [00:41:00] keeping predators out, it’s for keeping chickens in, or it’s for only if they’re chickens, outta a vegetable yard.
Audra Trosper: That stuff. Yeah.
Kenny Coogan: Like chicken wire is not to be used for a chicken coop.
Audra Trosper: Yes. Chicken wire is for stabbing you, not anything else.
We have from that stuff
Alyssa Warner: we did shoot, I can’t remember who it was with. I feel terrible for forgetting her name. I’m so glad we’re not live so that I can check this. Tamara, what was her last name? Poultry Predators
Preventing Poultry Predators.[00:42:00]
Kenny Coogan: It is not Erin Snyder, is it?
Alyssa Warner: No, that’s,
Kenny Coogan: I was,
Alyssa Warner: she was one of our fair speakers, but I was only on the events team, like oh, Tamia. Yeah. We have a great podcast with Tamia where she literally, she walks through this area where she, she purchased her farm, her family farm. And she shows us the old co, which had chicken wire on it, but it was too big.
So it did not predator proof. She showed exactly. This is where a raccoon’s gonna get in. This is where but it’s a great video podcast that we have up and we’ll also link that below. She also talks about the benefits of having a rooster and making sure that you don’t have a rooster who’s mad at you and is focused on protecting his girls.
Audra Trosper: We can’t have a rooster where we are. Okay.
Alyssa Warner: We have weird ordinances here where you are allowed to have a rooster as long as no one complains. But if someone complains, you’re no longer allowed to have a [00:43:00] rooster that is down. That’s what’s, that’s what’s written
Audra Trosper: down. It’s not written down. People do it in town, but I figure with the chickens and the goats and all of that, it’s not gonna, it’s not gonna throw a rooster in the mix.
Plus, there are enough houses around us that when a rooster crows here, because we have had them here before. It off of everything. It’s constantly and it’s just oh my God. Shut up, dude.
Alyssa Warner: I’ve found that free eggs are louder than any rooster.
Just given, making sure that I’m sharing and sharing my my eggs around with my neighbors, my fresh baked goods, fresh muffins. Oh, yeah.
Audra Trosper: Everybody who’s a neighbor here, gets free eggs because they have to listen to them we just had a lady move into the south of us, so I need to take her eggs at some point.
Alyssa Warner: Chicken education talks for grandkids also goes a long way. Would you, it’s Easter time. Would you like to take a picture of your kid reaching into a nest with some Easter egg or eggs in there like that?
Audra Trosper: I guess you could make a fake nest. So say, I wouldn’t [00:44:00] let him in my chicken house, but they could,
Alyssa Warner: oh, I have one of those little coops where the the egg box is like external. Oh. So you
Audra Trosper: have to go into mine and that way they can, try to unie your shoelaces and,
Alyssa Warner: oh, no, we have the, you’ve got a little tiny chicken coop. That’s why they get the free run of the yard for most of the day.
Yeah.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. But we have a big run. They have a, what is it, 30 by 20, 30 by 25 run attached to their house. So a good size run.
Alyssa Warner: I think that’s, and that’s all covered over unless we have any last chicken illness or chicken vetting thoughts. We’re still recording. I could record any last gems in your lovely brains.
Audra Trosper: Only that I wish I would hurry up and come up with a vaccine for the bird blue.
Alyssa Warner: That sure would be great. That sure would be lovely. I would really enjoy that.
Audra Trosper: But just so you know, according to some people on chicken groups. Bird flu is made up so that they can forces [00:45:00] us so they can come up with a vaccine, as they say so that we can poison all of our chickens with the vaccine, thereby giving our government the opportunity to somehow take over the world,
Alyssa Warner: I guess that’s how that works.
It was really interesting. I used to work at it Talbot, so all of my coworkers were a bit older than me and I was like 20 and I told one of my coworkers yeah, I’ve never had chickenpox. And she was very like, scared for me. And I told her I’m, I was born in 92.
I’ve been vaccinated for chickenpox. I’m okay. I’m not gonna die. That’s why I didn’t have to suffer through this disease like your children did.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. Yeah. And see that’s the thing I really wish they would come up with it. ’cause you actually said with cats they are susceptible to bird glue.
I’m actually very worried
Alyssa Warner: about my cats.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. And there have been some cases of goats also getting it, and a lot of them are dying when they get it.
Alyssa Warner: It’s in most cows now, right?
Audra Trosper: It’s in a lot of cows. And [00:46:00] it’s in, like I said it’s cropped up in goats a few times.
Alyssa Warner: And we had our first human death last month.
Yeah. He was elderly. But that doesn’t mean it’s not scary. That doesn’t really excuse anything.
Maybe would you guys I guess Audra, you’ve done go first aid’s the wrong like health checks and stuff, and I did administer vaccines with Missy to her goats once. Which would we would they give us a syringe that we would have to like.
Vaccinate our chickens. Is that how it would work?
Audra Trosper: I don’t know. Like I always get my chickens vaccinated against Marx.
Alyssa Warner: Yeah. When I, it’s hard to get them vaccinated against Merricks here in the Midwest.
Audra Trosper: See, I just, when I order them from hatcheries and it’s always an option and I pay for it.
It’s always something like, yep, nope. I’m like, yep, no problem.
Alyssa Warner: The last I’m taking a chance, the last three I looked at were, had big like paragraphs about the reasons why they don’t offer vaccines. And the reasons why they don’t, and it’s very misinformation filled.
Audra Trosper: [00:47:00] Yeah,
Alyssa Warner: we don’t, I’ve always been tonight because we don’t think you should have chemicals in your chickens.
I’m like, please give my chickens chemicals so they don’t
Audra Trosper: my chicken. Thank you.
Alyssa Warner: It’s fine.
Audra Trosper: I’ve never had my chickens drop over as far as I know from any of the vaccines that they’ve been, if they gave us one and I had to, give to.
I do have some,
Alyssa Warner: I think it was Chris, I don’t know if you ever met her, you probably didn’t. She worked on the classics magazines but she had Mars in her yard so she could only buy older chickens. Yeah, because she couldn’t get her hands on vaccinated chicks.
Audra Trosper: Yeah. Wow. Because most of them I know Meyer Hatchery offered him and, valley something or the Valley hatchery. They offered them and Ideal poultry offered it, ’cause all of mine came vaccinated, so even McMurray offers it. I’m not real happy with McMurray this time around, but
Alyssa Warner: Yep. Chickens might be cheap, but once you’ve raised them, it’s no longer cheap to replace a chicken because you have to [00:48:00] feed them for six, nine months before they lay again.
Audra Trosper: So anywhere from five to nine months, depending on breed.
Alyssa Warner: Yeah.
Audra Trosper: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Alyssa Warner: Awesome.
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Thanks for joining us for this episode of Mother Earth News and Friends. To listen to more podcasts and get connected on our social media, visit www.motherearthnews.com/podcast. You can also email us at Podcast@OgdenPubs.Com with any questions or [00:49:00] suggestions. Our podcast production team includes Kenny Coogan, Alyssa Warner, and myself, Josh Wilder.
Music for this episode is the song Hustle by Kevin MacLeod. The Mother Earth News and Friends podcast is a production of Ogden Publications.
Kenny Coogan: We hope you enjoyed the audio version of “The Pros and Cons of Chicken Coop Bedding”.
To listen to more audio articles, go to the Mother Earth News and Friends podcast and look for audio article in the episode title wherever you listen to your podcasts.
