Hi Phie, thanks for commenting. I’m sorry to have to say that your husband is basically right although good management/hygiene with grain/feed does seem to help. We do several things to discourage the rats such as rat proof feed storage, feeding the chickens only in the morning, not in the afternoon/evening so that they have time to clean everything up before nightfall when the rats come out. We usually have a python or two around, which helps as well. As we’ve implemented more of these things our rat numbers have gone down, but i’m not sure they’re gone altogether.

My reply:

“Hi, thanks for writing.

the sprinklers only water the area under the roosts, which is where we focus our composting efforts since that’s where most of the manure falls. We have found that more moisture here has sped up the composting process and made the material seem to move more quickly from raw materials toward a pleasant smelling, dark, crumbly, full decomposed state.

the rest of the chicken shed is as you describe: the chickens can take dust baths anywhere that the litter has thinned out enough for them to reach the earth floor.

i would say that over the whole shed floor, the process is something like this:

– green, coarse grass comes in and is spread in areas OTHER than under the roosts

– it dries out and is broken up and mixed into the older dry materials by the chickens

– some of it is moved under the roosts to top up the carbon there, and this is where the real composting process begins, with the proper balances of carbon and nitrogen, moisture, and aeration.”

“Kate,

This post begins to address a topic I have long had trouble with. That is moisture content of the litter. You specifically added sprinklers and apparently that works well for you. I own and have read Mr. Ussery’s book. From the links you listed in the second of his posts he says,

“The litter should never be wet. Wet litter is anaerobic (lacking oxygen), a condition conducive to certain pathogens, in contrast to decompositional microbes, who thrive with abundant oxygen. Should wet spots develop—for example, around the waterers—again use your spading fork to disperse the soaked material out over the rest of the litter, where the scratching of the birds will dry and aerate it. (Don’t be concerned about a little water, however. I often swish out the rims of waterers onto the litter in order to rinse. The resulting increase in moisture, if not excessive, actually benefits the microbial processes in the litter.)”

That seems to lean toward drier litter. Elsewhere in his writing he has written of his chickens taking dust baths in the litter and that is closer to what mine is now like. Is your litter like a “damp sponge” over the entire floor or just under the roosts? My plan from this point is to add some water to try to maintain a “damp sponge” moisture level in about one half of the coop and see what happens. Oh, I am on an earth floor now.

Anyway, thanks for addressing this issue. My chickens do a lot of scratching and they seem happy, but perhaps this is the nudge I need to improve the situation even more.”