Three big changes are happening for the chickens.
- We are switching from sand in the coop to coffee grounds.
- We are resolving the muddy slop in the run with compressed bedding pellets.
- We are changing their food in 3 ways.
We switched from straw to sand when we rebuilt the coop after the barn burned down. I became shy of things that burn after the fire, sand does not catch fire easily. So why switch? Three reasons:
- It can turn rock hard in the winter time.
- The dust is kind of insane and I worry about their lungs and eyes.
- Half the time I get it we have to wait till it dries out enough to put it in there.
Now I like the sand because it is easy to keep clean, you don’t have to worry about mold, it does help keep bugs down, the chickens have access to dust bathe material, rodents don’t love it for nesting material, you can take all the sand out and wash and dry it and put it all back in again, and it doesn’t really stink.
We were in the local Rural King and saw bags of coffee grounds advertised as bedding, bonus points for being a locally sourced product. We did research on it and based on that we decided to give it a try. No dust, decreased odor even more than sand plus it smells like coffee, it is a small local company and I like supporting them, and it is always dry because the stores keep it inside.
The sand and poop went to our compost and these grounds can do the same which for me is another big plus.
Negatives for the grounds are that they cannot get wet or they could mold, which sand does not do. But the coop is dry so I do not anticipate this being an issue. To make the switch I decided not to take all the sand out but to slowly via cleaning transition.
This product is manufactured by Grounds powerbycoffee.com (https://powerbycoffee.com/)
Coffee Ground animal bedding for the chicken coop.
I added two bags, three weeks ago and so far so good. The coop smells great. The chickens are doing fine. I can’t comment on the dust because the ratio of sand to grounds is way to high so there is still dust and they are chickens. I believe that chickens are comprised of about 98.7% dust.
