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My neighbor swears by pine shavings, I use straw, and now I don't know what to think
My neighbor Dale, who has kept hens on the same Ohio lot for 11 years, came over last Saturday while I was cleaning the coop and asked why I bother with straw when pine shavings keep things drier and break down faster. I told him straw lasts longer and my girls seem to like scratching through it, but he said his coop has zero smell after a month while mine gets ripe by day 10. Now I'm wondering if I've just been stubborn, or if this is one of those things where both work fine and people just pick a side. Straw or pine shavings, what are you all actually using out there?
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west.alice15d ago
Go with straw and stop second guessing yourself. Pine shavings smell great for the first week because they soak up the wet spots fast, but that same trait means they turn into a soggy mat once they're spent, and in a humid Ohio spring that mat gets way nastier than straw ever does. Straw lets air move through the pile so the top stays dry while the bottom does its thing, and you can pull the clean top layer back over when you clean instead of dumping the whole floor. My hens also dig through straw for hours chasing bits of seed, and a busy hen is a quiet hen. Dale's zero smell after a month probably means he's scooping twice as often as he's letting on.
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