Solitary chicken - need advice

[Sam Palmer]

Yesterday we finally put the Cube on to bark chippings and can't believe the difference it's made!

After almost 2 months of having it on the lawn and moving it every morning (we tried leaving it it one place for 2 days and couldn't believe the amount of poo in there, so weren't going to do that again). The top end of the garden now has large bald patches and mini craters like the surface of the moon where the chickens have been pecking below the Grub feeder. Plus every day I had to rake the lawn and pick up the poo. We didn't want our neighbours to have to do this if we go away.

When I first put them back in on their new surface, they were a bit nonplussed and not sure what to do, but they soon got the hang of scratching about in the bark.

It's great to see most of the poo disappear into the chippings.

And the best thing of all was to be able to go down there this morning and just refill the food, then let them out.

I wish we'd done this ages ago!

[mostin]

It's amazing isn't it . When we first put them in their walk in run with horse bedding down it was as if the poo was just disappearing

[Clare L]

So will you need to poo pick with the chippings? We are on auboise at the moment, which is great and they love it, but I still poo pick stuff in sight every day (but a far more pleasent task than when they were on grass ). We are thinking about using chippings over winter when it is wet as the auboise will get wet even with winter covers on and I was wondering if you need to clean them as regular or will it still smell especially if it gets damp ???

[oneyolktoanother]

i have been told you only have to change the chippings once a year but not sure, we have just bought some and was wandering how deep do you have it?

[Mrs Slats]

we refresh our chippings about once every 4-8 weeks*. rake out the front 30% (where they hang around for most of the time... pop it on your flower beds. then rake the rest of the chippings forward and put fresh stuff up the back.

 

Then once every 6 months or so we replace the whole lot.

 

 

 

*frequency depends on how much it makes you go

[Sal119]

We have got our Eglu on chippings and they're great. Like you we tried it on the grass and they were pooing faster than we could move it! We had ours in May and have just "topped up" the chippings as they mulch down into the ground and slowly get less. I've read that wood chippings are supposed to be better for them than bark but I don't know how true this is.

[Mrs Slats]

yep, you should go for woodchip rather than bark as bark can harbour / grow mould. a bit of auboise chucked to keep the smell down also works well.

[oneyolktoanother]

now im worried as my other half has just put bark chippings in the run and when i told him he said it would be arlight untill we get some wood chippings this month

[Mrs Slats]

hubby's right - it's fine - we started with bark and left it for ages till we realised.

 

give it a good rake every now and again, we noticed the mould growing in spots that had been untouched (under flower pots).

[oneyolktoanother]

thanks i can calm down abit now just want to do evrything right

[oneyolktoanother]

just wandered where do you get your wood chippings from?

[Mrs Slats]

B&Q i think. they don't stock it all the time though... which is a pain

[littlehenny]

Hi, we had our eglu on bark chippings for ages, but they seemed to sink into the soil below pretty quickly and also got very slimy when wet. About 9 months ago I contacted a local tree surgeon who delivered 2 big bags of wood chippings (leylandii leftovers!) which cost a fiver. They gave a really deep covering in the run and I haven't had to do anything with them since except rake over every day or so. No smells, poos seem to disappear and they don't get as nasty as bark when its wet (and that's a lot in Cheshire!)

 

Hope this helps.

[choplee]

Just a quickie can you use any type of chippings ..???( like the ornamental bark)

[Sam Palmer]

We've put them on bark chippings to make it easier for the neighbours to look after the chickens whilst we are on holiday. This way they only have to clean out the poo trays.

In the first few days the chippings were down, the majority of the poo just seemed to disappear as the chickens seemed to enjoy trying to dig to Australia!

We followed the instructions for putting the eglu on chippings on the Omlet website and used 3 120 litre bags of chippings from Homebase, which were on offer. Although the instructions were confusing, as they recommend wood chippings, but showed bark chippings in the photographs - and we couldn't find wood chippings in Homebase!

It will be interesting to see how they look when we get back.