The deep litter method is using wood shavings in the coop and letting them decompose right there in the coop. It has many benefits, like no smells, easy cleaning, a little extra heat in the winter and compost.
The deep litter method works by simply digging your coop down about a foot and filling it with wood shavings. Every month fill it to the top with more shavings and every six months dig out all the shavings and replace them. That’s it! Its super easy and works great.
If you’re wondering why this works, it’s pretty simple. The shavings mix with the chicken poo and compost right in the coop. Since it is composting, there are no smells produced (it’s truly amazing, we deep cleaned out coop a couple days ago and I was shock how bad it smelled for a little while before it started decomposing again!). Don’t ask me why this is, but it defiantly works!🤣 As well as eliminating odors, composting also produces heat, which is super helpful in cold winters, but doesn’t really make a difference in the summer.
Once you’ve cleaned out the old shavings, you can compost them some more and add them to the garden. I’m not sure, but I’ve heard that since chicken poop has a lot of nitrogen or something like that, it needs a little extra composting before being added to the garden. Personally, we don’t do this, we just spread the old shavings around our orchard, and it works fine.
So, in conclusion, the deep litter method simply requires you to add more chips every month and clean out and replace all of them very six months, and by doing this, you gain much more time and eliminate nasty chicken poop odors. This method is outstanding, and makes keeping chickens much easier.
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