[yellowpenguin]

Can someone advise as to best and cheapest stuff to lay down in chicken run. At the moment ours are on recycled wood chip, but I understand this should be renewed. Its a fairly big run as well, so am stuck as to what I should use, and how often to change.

[Fisherman]

I believe Easibed which can be bought from horse supply shops is good to use. Not tried it myself but I intend to over the winter. It said to be better than bark chippings in wet weather.

[evie2]

B&Q play area bark, 56L, £4.78

[yellowpenguin]

Many thanks for that, and how often should I look to be changing it and replacing with new ?

[evie2]

We've just started using it, 4  inches deep, we'll poo pick daily and every 2 weeks give it a rake with an eye to changing completely it every 8 - 12 weeks.

But  I know there are others on the forum who have much more experience with this.  It's worth while having a look through some of the older threads

[ehs284]

There's another post today which links with this question. We've used chippings for the last few years. They were fine, but disappeared with the hole digging birds and occasional raking out. Conclusion was to use chippings in the dry covered area and gravel in the rain washed much trodden area around this. Beyond this is grass. The 20mm gravel is about £30 a tonne from builders merchants which is expensive, but hopefully a rare purchase. Will update after the winter, but the last week has been very wet and it was a pleasure not to have wet feet.
For the grass area we sowed 'chicken grass' which has grown well. It is only 100mm ish high and seems to have survived well. HTH

[evie2]

That's interesting ehs, I've never seen chicken grass before, must look into it 

[birmancats]

I thought that too.  Googled it and didn't come up with anything.

[evie2]

Maybe ehs can enlighten us

[ehs284]

Ahh, sorry folks; it's called Poultry Grass. This is the site:

http://www.thegrassseedstore.co.uk/2500-diverse-poultry-pasture-p-185.html

It is expensive and you don't need much (they have advice on sowing, but some will get eaten). This is a big bag, so perhaps if a few smaller-run-users got together it would be viable. Kg for Kg it is much cheaper than, say, Q&B.

Our place is devoid of top soil, but it still grew well.

[evie2]

Thanks ehs,

[---Snakey---]

I have bark in the run which seems quite good. The girls have a good old scratch about in it :-). I tend to turn it over with a fork every 3 or 4 days and the big lumps of poo get intercepted before turning. Just a thought which I could do with a bit of guidance with.... when should i replace it and would the "used" bark be usable as a mulch over winter on the allotment raised beds or as general mulch around the garden flower beds?

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Cheers

Snakey