Eglu cube or go up with 2m run

[serenlas]

Hi, I'm new We had our Eglu Classic and 3 chickens delivered on Tuesday and my children & I are in love with them! The Classic is in a walk in run (approx 3mx2m I think) which is built on some very dry ground. The area doesn't get much rain because it's pretty sheltered, plus before the run was built it had some weed barrier and bark chippings on it so the earth has been very dry for pretty much 3 years. After reading up I decided to get some Easibed and ended up putting the whole bale down. However, 3 days of chicken scratching later and the ground is a huge mess of Easibed and clumps of dry earth, probably about 50/50.. is this what's supposed to happen? Isn't it going to be hard to rake it out without removing too much of the earth & eventually having the chickens living in a big pit? ?

 

Also, if you use Easibed and the like, how often do you poo pick?

 

& finally, I was thinking of poo picking and raking over fairly regularly and then replacing the whole lot in the school holidays, so I guess it'll get replaced every 7 weeks on average, give or take. Does this sound OK?

[Plum]

Sounds fabulous they'll have a great time digging around in that.

 

When I've used easibed I change it every two to three months so your 7 weeks sounds fine and I poo pick obious clumps each day. I think if you can't find any I wouldn't worry too much but you can cleanse the earth by putting down garden lime every few months to kill any nasties and neutralise the soil.

 

If you want to remove the easibed and not the soil you could use a garden sieve. I do that to remove the dust and soil from the run but leave the easibed

[Ain't Nobody Here]

My Easibed eventually ends up half soil too but to be honest, I don't really bother about it, I just shovel the top few inches into bags for the compost, sprinkle Stalosan F and garden lime everywhere and put a new layer of bedding down. I've been doing this for over a year and there doesn't appear to be a pit yet . I probably do this every couple of months (less in the summer when things are dry).

[serenlas]

Thanks for the tips, I'll look out for a garden sieve and some lime