www.permies.com Monica of At Wits End Homestead in Victor, Montana (a bit south of Missoula) talks about her deep bedding system for her chickens. Her chicken coop uses chopped up used christmas trees. She also talks about her experiments with deep bedding. Originally she used leaves and then she tried wood shavings But she found she was having to put down more every few days. With the chopped up christmas trees, she was adding more just once every month or so. Deep bedding is where you throw more bedding down all winter long without mucking out the coop. Then you muck out the coop once a year. She also shows off using buckets for nesting and how this helps with mite control. Music by Jimmy Pardo
How do you keep the hay in the buckets?…Everytime I put hay in the coop nesting boxes, buckets the first thing they do is pull it out.
my question is what do you use after the holidays? can you use the needles beneath living trees or do you trim a lot…?
I would also like to know if I can use spruce boughs. I dont have any pine on the back 20..
I love your video. We are in the process of getting a coop made and I like your set up. We were going to get the nesting boxes built into the wall. I need to know how big is your coop. We wanted 30 chickens so we figured a ten by twelve would be good . I sure like the pail set up but how many do you need for 30 chickens and how much floor space . I read 4 sq ft per bird. We get up to minus 13 degrees celcius here .. We could insulate also.. I would appreciate any help with questions i asked ty.
If you add charcoal to the chicken feed it will also reduce amonia production
Great information, thank you!
Great video. Keep it up Paul!
You could make a lot of biogas out of that chicken poop.
Awesome Paul,I’m all about taking it easy. Great technique. Deep beds seem to work all around.
Thank you so much for sharing this Paul!
Our coop was similar, but was built off the ground on stilts, so that chickens could hang out underneath the coop in the heat of the summer to stay cool & instead of big doors opening up, just a 2′ horizontal door opened upwards–just big enough to scoop/sweep the litter out the door and straight into the tractor bucket. Stilts made it the perfect height to scoop right into the tractor.
As an engineer, I want to reassure Monica that her laziness is valuable! It is the motivation for every engineering decision. Keep up the great work!
I like the bucket nesting idea. Are those the sort of soft feed-bucket type?
Are the sides of the shed wood? Don’t they rot with the litter/poop against it?
Great stuff Paul! Thanks for putting these great videos out, makes me look forward to having a hobby farm one day.
Hey, I used that “deep bedding” technique when I was a kid taking care of my pet rabbit. Of course, back then I just thought of it as being lazy. I had no idea I was so far ahead of my time. 🙂
Beautiful! Wood shavings worked out real well for me this winter. I switched to hay last week, but I don’t think it’s as good. Really don’t have time to go around picking up old Christmas trees. Wish I did. I’ve got 30 meat birds coming in end of April. Looking forward to deep bedding them. They poop like machines.
I have a new use for old Christmas trees!
Great idea, think I’ll give it a try!
60 hens and 3 roosters
not being lazy just conserving enegry,reduceing there carbon foot print lol great video thanks
Very nice, now if someone would tell me how to beet the radio active fall out I might live long enough to get my chicken to the pate.
Very good video! It makes a lot of sense – and so does using the plastic buckets. Seems like the coop is about 8 ft. by 8 ft. and I like the way the whole wall opens for cleaning out. How many chickens does she house there?
Thanks!
We started out with a foot of mixed wood chips it our run. There are only 8 hens but it is working well. In the spring we will move the whole coop and run, throw some compost on top of the wood chip/chicken poop mixture and plant a garden.