Patridge bantam chicken poorly foot?

[gemmcd]

Hi getting closer to chicken arrival day and after scrawling through the forum I think I have decided to put eglu and run onto a permananent base. The run won't be covered so I am going to go for woodchip. However I am a little unsure as to how this gets cleaned. I read somewhere you change it every 6 months - but won't it smell? Do I try and get poo out of it or do I use a rake to turn it over? Do I just leave it? Does it smell? I guess what I wnat is a cleaning schedule for the run with woodchip in it! Being a total and utter newbie to this I feel very ignorant - it may become clearer when the chooks arrive but I am trying to get it into my head what I need to do!

 

Thanks!

 

Gx

[Plum]

Hi there, Im going for woodchip as well. There have been quite a few threads about this which Im sure someone will put a link to.

Generally it seems you rake out the mucky bits and poo from underneath weekly and change it about every 3 months but everyone does something different. If you have it on earth you dig earth and put down something like lime. If you have slabs you can s"Ooops, word censored!"e and hose down. Someone says they hose the woodchip.

Some people poo pick each day.

If you look in FAQ or search for woodchip you'll get more.

Im just going to play it by ear. (and watch what you do).

When's chicken day?

[earthmam1]

Hi and welcome.

 

I got my about 4 weeks ago and just this last couple of days have put it on a woodchip base. I went for the lighter coloured woodchip (I figured I might be able to spot the poo better!!!) Garden lime and Stanoslan (not sure of spelling) seems to be used before you replace all the woodchip. Not sure how often this should be done, somebody I am sure will say

[HENthusiastic]

HI. my girls are on woodchip, but in a covered walk in run. I regularly poo pick and so far havent replaced my wood chip. Ive had my run and 5 girls since March. The only time I had smell problems was when spilt pellets got wet..... they really do smell. I coped with this just by using a spade to s"Ooops, word censored!"e out the pellets which had become like a paste. I havent used lime or salostan yet, but probably will do at some point. Bet you are eggcited about getting your girls.

[Carol U]

I used to use woodchip when I had an eglu run, but I did find that it got very wet and slimy during wet weather. I found that covering the run with a clear plastic shower curtain (only about 80p in Ikea) kept everything - including the hens - much more pleasant. How often to change the woodchips really depends on how much time your hens spend in there. I think I changed mine about once every 6 weeks or so and it was all much less smelly than I had expected.