Deep Litter

[CrealCritter]

My coop is a cinder block building with a cement floor.

 

[Beekissed]

The framed hole leads to the yard or run i guess you would call it. And yes the cinder block building had a caved in roof that I rebuilt out of lumber from my sawmill.

That's a nice big hole almost at floor level and should pipe you in some passive airflow there, so that's not too bad at all. Good intake from below, so now you just need some big openings up top to siphon that stale air and humidity out and a good screen door for a cross breeze and you should have some good airflow going. The fan is a good idea for the summer and some people just turn them around and use them in the winter to pipe humidity and stale air out of the coop too.

It looks doable for DL but you'd likely have to find a way to get more moisture in there, pretty much like I'm doing...I'm going to catch some rainwater and pipe it into the mass with an old garden hose section.


It sounds all like a bunch of fuss but it really does pay off when you get it all situated right...you can walk in there and not smell bad things, the air is cleaner, the footing dryer and with your tall ceilings you can let that stuff build pretty deep.

 

[CrealCritter]

That's a nice big hole almost at floor level and should pipe you in some passive airflow there, so that's not too bad at all. Good intake from below, so now you just need some big openings up top to siphon that stale air and humidity out and a good screen door for a cross breeze and you should have some good airflow going. The fan is a good idea for the summer and some people just turn them around and use them in the winter to pipe humidity and stale air out of the coop too.

It looks doable for DL but you'd likely have to find a way to get more moisture in there, pretty much like I'm doing...I'm going to catch some rainwater and pipe it into the mass with an old garden hose section.


It sounds all like a bunch of fuss but it really does pay off when you get it all situated right...you can walk in there and not smell bad things, the air is cleaner, the footing dryer and with your tall ceilings you can let that stuff build pretty deep.

I would have to raise up my drop feeder to which is not in the vid - it's about 8" off the cement floor. I could also add a roof vent on the high (right) side right. The nest boxes are built into the rafters on the low (left) side. Some soffit vents on the low side would help also. It's just a little 6x8 coop with a slopped roof like 7' tall on the short side to about 8' on the tall side. I have about 14' x 26' of storage behind the right side wall. The building its'self is 20 x 26 - I just carved up a 6x8 for the layer coop. So I have lots of options to reconfigure / expand if needed.

 

[Beekissed]

Thank you for starting this thread @Beekissed! This is something that never interested me much, until I read what you said elsewhere about how much warmer the coop is inside, thanks to the composting litter giving off heat. This method, if anything, is about 1000x better for heating the coop in winter! I'm curious, have you measured the temperatures before you started doing this to compare?

If I move the thermometer away from the composting area, it will usually just measure what the outside temps measure if placed in other parts of the coop. It's only over the digester, at the roosts, where you see the 10* difference.

My coop is pretty open air, so having that heat source at the roost level in the winter time is a good feeling. Also the warm under their feet when they stand on that mass when days are brutal cold. It won't heat the whole coop unless the whole coop is being intensely composted like the mass under the roosts. I don't have enough manure in my coop to develop the whole coop as a manure digester, so I have to concentrate my efforts where the poop is deposited nightly.


My coop measures 10x12 so I make the most use of the space by concentrating on the roosting end for creating compost and winter heat.

You'll enjoy this in the summer months as well...though it puts out heat and moisture in the summer months, usually I have the flaps raised on the side of the coop so the prevailing breezes can create a cross breeze to remove that excess heat. But in the summer time is when it's the most convenient...no flies, no smells, and I'm not having to speed up the composting then as the ambient temps will do that for me. Compost happens quicker in the summer, so as quickly as you put green in there, you can soon enough pull out some compost to put on the garden again.

 

[treerooted]

I didn't even know people attempted DL without a dirt floor until I joined BYC, I just assumed the two went hand in hand. I'm using DL in the coop I have now, and like you Bee I pretty much just use what's available and make sure to switch it up from time to time if I find I've been using the same stuff for too long. But I've only had it going since the summer and everything froze in the winter, and I'd like to build a new coop in the spring, so all in all it might be awhile until I see the final effects of it all.

My issue this year was too much moisture and too much ventilation. I know, I know, you can never have too much ventilation (minus drafts), but at -40 my coop was just too cold. I want more focused ventilation in specific locations. I'd like to build a new coop in the spring and that design will incorporate deep litter: an easy way to remove litter when needed and adequate ventilation.

 

[Hinotori]

Ive been trying to convince hubby to build a Wood's style coop for years. We're a bit more wet than the area it was developed for, but we don't normally get anywhere near as cold.

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

The coop is scheduled to be cleaned out this afternoon. Otherwise, it's been doing really well, for several months now. I have even re-homed 20 of the 30 birds I had, so I can move. It is just time to clean it out is all. There is more than adequate ventilation though. That tin shed has holes all over the place!

 

[sumi]

That looks great! I'm starting to consider deep litter more and more. It looks like a great way to make compost.

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

That looks great! I'm starting to consider deep litter more and more. It looks like a great way to make compost.

That's what I do. Let the chickens do the coop...with the poop. Then, a big pile goes to the compost pile to ....compost!!

Then, a few months later.....some awesome compost....goes into the gardens....and the grubs....go back into the chickens!

 

[sumi]

Can I cheat and plonk the coop over the compost heap? So far they didn't show much interest in it, but it seems to be breaking down well, in spite of our ridiculously cold winter.