Home Chicken Coops 7 Types of Bedding for Chicken Coops

7 Types of Bedding for Chicken Coops

by Jamelyn

There are several types of chicken coops and just as many types of bedding for those coops. When choosing bedding for your chickens, you will need to take into consideration maintenance required for the bedding, cost, and making sure you don’t choose a bedding that can cause health issues for your chickens.

A chicken coop can have either a dirt floor or a solid floor made of wood or concrete. The bedding you choose will sit on top of the flooring so your chickens will not be directly on the floor. Several types of bedding for a chicken coop include pine shavings, sand, straw, and organic materials.

Read on to learn about 7 types of bedding for chicken coops and which type of bedding will work best for you and your backyard chickens.

1. Pine Shavings

The most common type of flooring for chicken coops is kiln-dried wood shavings, also referred to as pine shavings. Pine shavings come in two varieties: flakes or fine.

The fine shavings are supposed to be low dust, but some chicken keepers find them to still be a bit too dusty.

We use the flake shavings in the brooder with our chicks and they had no issues with the bedding.

Pine shavings work great in a chicken coop because they provide a place for droppings to land. You don’t want manure to sit directly on the flooring of your chicken coop because that is unsanitary, resulting in odors and flies, which will make the flooring wear out faster and can cause illness in your chickens. The pine shavings will capture droppings and will help control odor in the coop.

One benefit of using pine shavings for chicken coop bedding is that they’re widely available. Pine shavings can easily be found at farm supply stores, including Tractor Supply.

You will want to add bedding to the coop as it gets kicked out, so it’s helpful to use a type of bedding that is easy to find. The pine shavings are lightweight too, making them easy to transport from the store to your chicken coop.

For an average size chicken coop (about the size of a small shed or child’s playhouse), the pine shavings are not very expensive. We use about 1 bag (8 cubic feet) to cover our chicken coop, which costs about $6, and then add more as needed. We typically try to keep the bedding in the coop at about 2 to 3 inches in depth.

Another benefit of using pine shavings is that they can be added to your compost pile once they become very soiled. Our chickens will kick out the pine shavings into their run, which helps reduce muddiness in the run after it rains, but causes us to need to buy the shavings more frequently.

Pine shavings call also be used in the nesting boxes; however, I recommend using nesting pads. Take a look at my recommendations page for more information on what I use.

2. Wood Chips

Woods chips can be used as bedding material in the chicken coop. Make sure that wood chips are kiln-dried or aged since fresh, “green” wood can result in mold in the chicken coop. Chickens have sensitive respiratory systems so mold is not something that you want in your chicken coop.

Wood chips last a long time before they need to be changed, so if you are able to prevent your chicken from kicking the chips out of the coop, you might only need to add more bedding once a year. Just like the pine shavings, you will be able to add the wood chips to your compost pile.

One problem with wood chips is that depending on where you live, these might be difficult to find. Another issue is that the chips might be too hard, resulting in the chickens not wanting to nest or dust bathe in the bedding.

3. Saw Dust

Saw dust is another option for chicken coop bedding. Similar to wood chips, make sure the saw dust is from aged wood, and that it does not contain stains or varnish.

I have found there are a few issues with sawdust. First, saw dust doesn’t fluff up as much as the pine shavings, making it less absorbent for droppings. It also provides less cushion as chickens jump off roosting bars to land on the floor. Additionally, if the sawdust is very fine and dusty it can cause issues with your chicken’s respiratory system.

4. Sand

Some chicken keepers recommend using sand in their chicken coop and run. They say that it works well in areas that get a lot of rain by drying quickly and preventing the run from becoming muddy.

I have looked into sand for use in our chicken run and found more issues than I was able to find benefits. For starters, sand is heavy. Sand can be expensive. During the summer, it gets hot. During the winter, it won’t hold heat. Neighborhood cats see the chicken run is a giant litter box. It doesn’t provide a soft place for your chickens to walk. It would add too much weight to the floor of my raised off the ground chicken coop.

As if those aren’t enough reasons to not use sand, you will also need to scoop out the chicken droppings daily. For some people, they say they prefer this since it means the chicken coop is relatively poop free. I have an indoor cat, so I don’t particularly want another litter box to clean daily.

5. Straw

Straw can be used in a chicken coop that has a wooden floor (see section below on “Organic Material”); however, it’s not recommend for use in coops with dirt floors.

Straw is the dried out version of hay, which is green and fed to livestock. You do not want hay in your chicken coop as the seed heads on the stalks can attract rodents, like mice and rats.

A benefit of using straw as bedding is that it’s relatively cheap and easy to find, especially in the fall. Straw is useful in insulating chicken coops so it might be a good bedding to use in your coop during the winter.

However, if the straw is not cut in small enough stalks, it can become matted with the chicken droppings and make cleaning the chicken coop difficult.

Straw can also support the growth of molds, especially in damp conditions, like in coops with dirt floors or climates that have high humidity or receive a lot of rain.

6. Newspaper

A base layer of newspaper can be used as bedding in a brooder.

Newspaper is slippery for chicks to walk on, which can result in splayed legs. If you use newspaper in the brooder, make sure to add a layer of pine shavings on top.

The newspaper layer will help protect the bottom of the brooder box and will catch any water or droppings that make it past the pine shavings. This is especially helpful if you are using a cardboard box as a brooder.

Newspaper is not recommended for chicken coops since it will get disgusting very quickly from the droppings. Also, the chickens might peck at and eat the newspaper.

7. Organic Material

Organic material that can be used in a coop include leaves and grass clippings.

The leaves will need to be dried as wet leaves can cause mold and too much moisture in the coop. Grass clippings should also be dried and be cut from grass that contains no chemicals, like fertilizers or pesticides.

Using organic material as bedding in a chicken coop allows you to employ the deep litter method. In brief, this method turns the bedding of the chicken coop into compost that is ready for the garden. You will add certain layers of material to the coop (similar to a compost pile using browns and greens).

The main benefit to the deep litter method is that you use the manure from the chickens and the chickens scratching the litter and turning it so that after a few months it’s ready to add to your garden.

You can use the deep litter method if you have a dirt floor chicken coop since it will allow worms into the litter. If you have a wood floor chicken coop, then you will need straw as a base layer and the litter will need to be removed and placed in a compost pile until it is ready for use in the garden.

The deep litter method is a bit more involved, but that gives you a brief introduction to the concept.

We use a version of deep litter in our chicken run since it has a dirt floor. I’ve already mentioned that the chickens will kick the pine shavings out of their coop and into their run. We also give them kitchen and garden scraps to eat in their run so there are leftover bits and pieces that they didn’t eat that will end up on the ground.

After we pick weeds in the yard (using our Grampa’s Weeder, which is awesome), we will add them to the run. The chickens like to throw the weeds in the air, walk on them, scratch around them, and finally eat them. All this material breaks downs and provides a compost-like material in the chicken run.

These chickens are snacking on some weeds that I picked. The one in the center is throwing the weed in the air and over her back.

In short, we prefer using pine shavings for our chickens. We used fine pine shavings over a layer of newspaper in the brooder for the first two weeks. After the chicks were a bit bigger, we started using the flake pine shavings in the brooder and then eventually in the coop.

Pine shavings are easy to transport, relatively inexpensive, do not cause any respiratory issues for our chickens, and do not require a lot of additional maintenance for our chicken coop.

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