Flooring for chicken run?

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Tubaman

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I have positioned a run (18m x 5m) up on a raised area in my garden (more like a field than a garden) and thanks to the bad weather it has now turned into a bit of a mud bath. Does anyone have any suggestions what to put on the floor of the run to help with the mud situation? A close friend of mine is a tree surgeon so I have access to a lot of wood clippings however I have read mixed things about if this is good for chickens or not?

Also! I am currently clearing a much bigger area to make a more permanent home for the chickens ( and more ;) ). So if started from scratch what would people recommend goes down as a base, has anyone got any advice as to if I should go concrete or gravel or any other substance ??

Thanks in advance

Paul
 
I think wood chip is ok as long is it hardwood rather than softwood - My run is pretty muddy and i am getting some hardwood bark to see if that helps. I think a lot of people do have a permanent base ie concrete but i haven't as i rent my property!
 
At various times I have worked my way through bare earth, (mud nightmare) concrete blocks (where does the muck go when you hose them off? It just turns into slurry at the side of the run) autumn leaves (the girls loved them but they got really horrible to clear out after a few weeks) wood chippings (quite good but went mouldy, very bad for your lungs when digging out, and didn't compost very well) rubber chippings (great on well drained base, though difficult to poo pick as its not absorbent and the poos stick to the rubber chips, which won't compost, but got extremely messy even when hosed down after the first year because although most of the poo is soluble, there is some residue from grass etc that gradually builds up into a smelly cake at the base of the chippings and reduces drainage.)
The only thing I found to be extremely effective, in fact indispensable, is a liner of permeable landscape fabric, well pegged down all over the base of the run. Whatever you put on top, the hens can't dig the mud up through the liner, its light, relatively cheap, light amd easy to lay, and very long lasting if you put a good layer of soft stuff on top.(mine has now been down over 3 years and has lasted out the 2 and a half years of rubber chippings before I gave up on them) its soft and warm on their feet, and landlords don't object, Fuzzyfelt!)
One more thing. Last summer I gave up and had a proper roof put on my run and then I put down a deep litter bed of Aubiose, which is shredded hemp stems. This is highly absorbent so it dries out the droppings, the hens love digging it up into great heaps, and so far I've found it's very easy to poo pick as it sort of coats the droppings with bits of shredded hemp. Under the roof it stays dry, and the first lot I put down has lasted with very little topping up, so inexpensive in the long run.
I wouldn't think sand or gravel would be very good, how would you pick up the droppings and what would you do with the resulting buckets of mess as it wouldn't compost? Also, when you came to dig it all out, it would be heavy, smelly and disgusting - I should imagine you'd have to bag it up and take it to the dump, not good in the boot of your car!
So I'd say, go for the membrane base, and roof as much of the run as you can manage (also this is good for predator control, foxes can get over a 6ft high fence but can't ge in through a good roof.But that's just my personal experience of keeping a few hens in a comparatively small(12 sq. metres) run and other people will have different solutions for their own situations.
 
i think they only thing i havent tried yet is the rubber chippings but i have done it all except concrete of course { wont do that on a allotment site } now i cant make up my mind wether to buy a big bag of sand and put that down with slabs on top or just fork out the money to roof the entire run but i could be looking at around £300 for the whole area as i would need 3 sheets to do the width of the run and thats at least £45 for 3 sheets well would be if i use onduline and i dont know how many length worse :lol: lets put it this way it'll be lots but the bummer thing is though i have been offered 18 sheets for free but i would have to wait 3-4 yrs as friends on the plot next to me are going to have an extension added to the side of the house which means all the garages etc have got to go but i cant wait that long for free roofing sheets :-)06 . think i'll just get the sand at about £40 a large ton bag and stuggle wheelbarrowing it some distance to the run and relay the slabs with wood chip on top your best bet would be smaller pens and roof them but ethier way what ever you decide will probably be costly.
 
We bark chippings in ours which rot down in about 6 months and need replacing. Don't like the rubber tyre chips as they can have sharp wire strands left in them.
 
Mines concrete and I couldn't be happier with it. I'd recommend if you haz the monies to do it. As not only is it easy to keep dry you can raise it off the floor slightly to stop any runoff onto it.
 
Like Marigold I have a small run, but it is covered. The floor is covered with a membrane which is pegged down. I put wood-chip ( not bark) on top, if I can get it, if not I use Easybed or something similar. Keeps lovely and dry and if poo is picked daily there is very little smell.
 
Just remember that chicken poo is a valuable thing when properly composted (2 years). 4x the strength of normal compost so has to be diluted but in the old days of egg producers the sale of chicken poo was the difference between profit and loss. Our old garden used to grow some fantastic stuff. So pick a base that allows you to harvest it Tubaman.
 
try telling that to people on my allotment site i got tons of the stuff and no one wants it :-)06 they perfer to buy the tubs of pellets instead .
 
I've had wood chip from a tree we had cut down, (there were a few fir cones in it which smelt lovely!) It was great but gradually broke down but served a purpose.

Have covered half of my run with a tarpaulin, cheaper than onduline & not so ideal but again, serves the purpose well. The area under the tarp is lovely & dry & when we had the snow recently, it meant the girls had a cosy place. The half not covered is mud, mud, mud - hippo's would be happy in it!
 
its meant to be quite dry for a few days but i wont hold my breath :lol:
 
At least when it was frozen & snowy, it wasn't muddy...
No problem with frozen drinkers either- I've got two, one in the run & one in the house, so there's always a defrosted one :-)17
 
agree with that but it doenst last long though , i need to get working on ethier sorting out where the favs are now ready for roofing or i start building another seprate pen that can be roofed not sure what way round to do it if i roof where they are now then the only way to get an overlap of roofing is to drop the height of the run but i cant do that until the big girls side is roofed as the whole lot is joined as one big run which means at some point it wont be fox proof :( i dont need the roofs to be 7 ft tall so to do a lower roof with out touching the main 7 ft fnece will be to cut the wire about 5 1/2 ft and slide the sheets between the wire but still keep the 7 ft height but i am worried that will weaken the main fence even if i add more planks along where i cut the wire umm might be easier to just build another run i got plenty of space and wont take long as i have plenty of stuff just might not have enough wire though .
 
We put a roof on before the winter set in and boy are we glad we did !!! Only problem with having them in the one spot is the holes that they keep digging - it's going to be fun when it's time to move them in the spring and we have to repair that bit of ground. For the floor we used wood chips from the local farm/countryside store - it's used for horse stables so it's quite big chips and has worked quite well. :-)99
 
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