Starting out with chickens can be overwhelming. Despite all the claims that “raising chickens is so easy,” there truly is a learning curve when you’re first beginning. The largest learning curve for figuring out how to raise healthy and happy chickens may be in learning chicken coop design. This includes figuring out all the details of using, or not using, chicken coop bedding. 

What is chicken coop bedding?  Chicken coop bedding is material, like sand or straw, that is used on the coop floor to manage chicken waste (i.e., serve as litter to control moisture and odors) and to provide cushion for chickens jumping off of roosts or nesting boxes.

Do all chicken coops need bedding? Certain chicken coops may not need bedding, but most coops do. Chickens may suffer health problems and injuries without bedding.

In this article you’ll learn what qualities good bedding material has, how to choose the right bedding for you, and how to manage a coop with no bedding. 

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What is chicken coop bedding and why is it used?

Backyard chicken coop bedding plays a somewhat different role than bedding does for other farm animals. With other farm animals, bedding serves as both ‘bedding’ (i.e., a place to ‘bed on’—to sleep or to rest) and as litter.

Backyard chicken coop bedding, on the other hand, serves only as litter. 

Backyard chickens roost on roosting bars at night. They do not bed on bedding. They also don’t live solely in the coop. They spend most of their time outside, and so their bedding materials are needed only for chicken waste management. 

This means that backyard chicken coop bedding needs to have the following qualities of good litter:

1. High moisture absorption

2. Quick moisture release

3. Odor control

4. Non-toxic composition

Why does chicken coop bedding need to absorb moisture?

To understand why bedding needs to absorb moisture, first you need to understand a little bit about the characteristics of chicken waste. 

Chicken waste is composed of both feces and urine. Chickens don’t typically expel a lot of liquid urine, unless they are under a great amount of stress, either physical (like heat stress) or emotional (like fear; Damerow, 2015). Instead, urine typically comes in the form of urates, which are white deposits that cap chicken poop. 

Despite the lack of much liquid urine, chicken waste (the combination of feces and urates) still has an extremely high moisture content, ranging from 55%-83% (Miles et al., 2011; van der Hoeven-Hangoor et al., 2014). 

If your bedding material can’t absorb the moisture from chicken waste, it can cause a whole host of problems for your chickens’ health. 

Wet bedding can cause lesions on chicken feet that may get infected by bacteria, leading to bumblefoot and other problems (see Shepherd et al., 2017 for a review). 

Bacterial activity in wet litter leads to a drastic increase in ammonia in the coop, which is produced through the bacterial breakdown of waste and litter. Ammonia is a gas that can cause serious health problems for your chickens, including depressed growth, respiratory ailments, and even blindness. Viral infections have also been linked to high ammonia levels (Ritz et al., 2005). 

Wet litter may also support the growth of dangerous bacteria that can cause illness or death in your chickens (e.g., Line, 2006).  Dangerous molds may also take hold in wet litter, causing diseases, such as aspergillosis and mycoses. Parasites like roundworms, tapeworms, and coccidiosis thrive in wet litter. 

See Soliman et al. (2018) and Ritz et al. (2005) for further review of pathogens in litter.

Why does chicken coop bedding need to quickly release moisture?

Chicken coop bedding needs to not just absorb water well, but also to release water quickly (Bilgili et al., 2009). If your bedding doesn’t release water quickly through evaporation, you’ll eventually end up with all the same problems you’d have if your bedding didn’t absorb water at all.

The goal is to use bedding that stays dry. Both the absorption of water and the quick release of water play important roles in keeping bedding dry.   

How does chicken coop bedding control odors?

Dry Chicken coop bedding helps to dry out chicken waste quickly, thereby preventing odors.

Chicken waste that comes into contact with wet bedding, on the other hand, will take a very long time to dry out. The mixture of wet waste and wet litter creates an environment where anaerobic microbes will thrive and produce strong, offensive odors (Shepherd et al., 2017). 

A good bedding material is one that stays as dry as possible – this is how odors can be controlled in your coop.

Are all chicken coop bedding materials non-toxic?

The answer to this question should obviously be yes, but unfortunately, it’s a big resounding NO! 

The most commonly used bedding in the broiler industry in the United States is pine shavings (Shepherd et al., 2017). Pine shavings bedding is also commonly used in Europe (Kaukonen et al., 2017). This bedding is incredibly toxic for chickens in the long-term.  

Pine shavings are used in the broiler industry because they are readily available, cheap, and the industry does not care as much about a chicken’s quality of life as backyard chicken keepers do. Most importantly, broilers are killed before the toxic effects of pine can cause significant damage to their health and well-being. Broilers typically don’t live for more than a month or two. 

If, however, you are raising backyard chickens and went them to live long, happy lives, pine shavings are one of the worst choices for chicken coop bedding. Most backyard chicken keepers are completely unaware of pine’s toxicity, and so many people fill their coops with toxic pine shavings. 

To understand the toxic effects of pine and why you should never use it in the coop, see my article, Pine shavings in the coop: The secret chicken killer?

Cedar shavings and peat moss, though less commonly used, are also toxic to chickens—see my articles, Why you should never use cedar in your chicken coop and Peat moss for chicken coop bedding: Amazing or dangerous?

All wood shavings bedding—pine, cedar, and hardwoods (aspen, beech, birch, maple, etc.) are carcinogenic as well (Demers et al., 1997). Play sand is also a carcinogen, and has no place in a chicken coop. 

For more information on these bedding types and many others, see my article, A comparison of 21+ chicken coop bedding materials.

Other Qualities of Good Bedding

Good bedding should also provide a good cushion for your chickens. Despite being birds, chickens are fairly clumsy at moving from one vertical level to another. When they jump off of roosting bars or out of nesting boxes onto the coop floor, they land with a hard thud.

Bedding needs to be soft and deep enough (a very minimum of 3 inches) to cushion a chicken’s landing. Otherwise, they may injure their feet or legs. Anecdotal stories abound about chickens jumping off of roosting bars onto frozen sand and breaking their legs (as an aside, you should never put wet sand in a coop—only use dry sand).

Some bedding also has good insulating properties—this is a plus, but not a requirement for good bedding. I’ve found that having sand in my coops keeps the coops much cooler in the hot summer months. Some people using the deep litter method with straw have found that it keeps their coops warmer in the winter months. 

How to choose a good chicken coop bedding for you

Why sand and chopped straw are the best bedding materials

The best bedding for your coop will depend on your purpose for raising chickens. If you are raising your chickens for meat, or you plan to slaughter your laying hens after a year or two, you may be able to use toxic or carcinogenic bedding in your coops. 

As a chicken lover, I’m not recommending this, but I want you to have all the information so that you can make the best decision for you.    

The carcinogenic and toxic properties of wood shavings, peat moss, and play sand will likely not cause serious harm to your chickens after only a year or two. The exception to this is if you have a dangerous mold or bacteria growing in your peat.

However, please be aware that if you raise your chickens on one of these bedding types, they are likely living a lower quality of life. These bedding types are dusty, and some (like cedar and pine) contain chemicals that cause respiratory and sinus discomfort, as well as liver problems—see my articles on the dangers of pine here and the dangerous of cedar here for more information, including dozens of academic references. 

The best chicken coop bedding materials are course-grained sand and chopped straw. These bedding types are the least dangerous for your chickens. 

Sand has the very best litter properties—although it doesn’t absorb moisture as well as many other bedding types, it excels at releasing moisture quickly (Bilgili et al., 2009), and therefore stays dry. Your coop will be at its absolute cleanest with sand, but you do have to scoop the chicken poop out regularly. If you are unwilling to do this at least weekly, consider using chopped straw instead.

In a small coop, you can use a simple cat litter scooper to remove poop, like this kitty litter scooper on Amazon. If you do this every day, it only takes a minute or two. 

In a larger coop, you can use a shovel with holes in the blade to scoop it out, like this shovel on Amazon. Larger coops take a little longer to clean, but it’s worth it for your girls. 

I suggest using a poop tray under the nesting bars to collect most of the poop. Then you can just scrape the poop off the tray every day with a scraping tool, like this taping knife on Amazon. This will greatly speed up cleaning your coop.

For everything else you could possibly want to know about sand bedding, including what type to buy, where to get it, and how to manage it year-round, check out my article, Using sand in your chicken coop.

Straw is also a good bedding type. It’s excellent at absorbing water (Shepherd et al., 2017), and is not toxic or carcinogenic. Unfortunately, it doesn’t release moisture very well (Shepherd et al., 2017), and so it can harbor bacteria and molds.  

Even so, straw is much safer than the other bedding types on the market. With vigilance and proper maintenance of your straw bedding, you can almost eliminate the risk of a pathogen problem. 

I actually use this chopped straw on Amazon for one of my coops, since I can’t find chopped straw locally. It is a very clean, dry straw that is easy to manage and maintain. It also greatly expands when you take it out of the bag, so the bag goes a long way and lasts a long time.

For everything you could possibly want to know about straw bedding, including how to manage it in your coop and how often to replace it, check out my article, Using straw in your chicken coop.

Does Every Chicken Coop Need Bedding?

Not every chicken coop needs bedding, but most coops do. Chicken coops that do well without bedding are those that are fairly small and have very low roosting bars and nesting boxes. 

Chicken tractors also don’t need bedding as they are moved to fresh grass each day. I won’t discuss them further here since they don’t have floors and they are mobile—the fresh grass acts as their bedding.

If you are considering not using bedding, you need to make sure your coop floor is safe for your chickens. Be certain it doesn’t release gases, that it doesn’t have splinters or anything rough, and that it isn’t slippery. All of these features are a recipe for serious injury to your chickens. 

Also, if your coop doesn’t use bedding, your chickens need to be free range. They need to be spending very little time in the coop, and they need to have a lot of safe places to range and to rest outside. 

If your chickens don’t have comfortable places where they can hide from the elements, predators, and aggressive flock mates, they will likely spend too much time in the coop. If they are spending too much time in the coop, you will need bedding for their comfort. 

You will need to scrape the poop off your coop floors every morning if you don’t use bedding. I use this scraping tool on Amazon to scrape the poop trays below my roosts every morning. This tool will work just as well on a smooth coop floor.

If your coop has a dirt floor, you will likely want to put a poop tray below the roosts so that you can remove the bulk of the poop from your coop. You may need to add more fresh dirt to your coop from time to time if your floor gets slimy, smelly, or gross in any way. 

You can also buy zeolite minerals to throw on the floor to help eliminate moisture—you can get zeolite minerals here on Amazon if you can’t find them at your local farm supply store. These minerals can do wonders in absorbing moisture. They are great for use in both coops with and without bedding.

Whether you use bedding in your coop or not, always keep an eye on your coop’s condition. Your coop should never smell very badly or disgust you. If it does, you need to change your management practices. 

Whatever you decide to do, your coop needs to remain dry. 

You May Also Be Interested in:

• The BEST luxury coop you’ll ever buy: Spoil your chickens with Rita Marie's

• Chicken coop ventilation: 21 design ideas with pictures

• Sand for chicken coop bedding: Pros, cons, and how to do it right

• Straw for chicken coop bedding: Pros, cons, and how to do it right

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Sources

• Bilgili, S., Hess, J., Blake, J., Macklin, K., Saenmahayak, and Sibley, J., “Influence of bedding material on footpad dermatitis in broiler chickens.” The Journal of Applied Poultry Research, v. 18, no. 3, 2009, p. 583-589.

• Damerow, G., The Chicken Health Handbook. North Adams: Storey Publishing, 2015.

• Demers, P., Teschke, K., and Kennedy, S., “What to Do About Softwood? A Review of Respiratory Effects and Recommendations Regarding Exposure Limits.” American Journal of Industrial Medicine, v. 31, no. 4, 1997, p. 385-398.

• Kaukonen, E., Norring, M., Valros A., “Evaluating the effects of bedding materials and elevated platforms on contact dermatitis and plumage cleanliness of commercial broilers and on litter condition in broiler houses.” British Poultry Science, v. 58, no. 5, 2017, p. 480-489.

• Line, J., “Influence of Relative Humidity on Transmission of Campylobacter jejuni in Broiler Chickens.” Poultry Science, v. 85, no. 7, 2006, p. 1145-1150.

• Miles, D., Rowe, D., and Cathcart, T., “Litter ammonia generation: Moisture content and organic versus inorganic bedding materials.” Poultry Science, v. 90, no. 6, 2011, p. 1162-1169.

• Ritz, C., Fairchild, B., and Lacy, M., “Litter quality and broiler performance.” Cooperative Extension Service, The University of Georgia, Bulletin 1267, 2005, p. 1-5.

• Shepherd, E., Fairchild, B., and Ritz, C., “Alternative bedding materials and litter depth impact litter moisture and footpad dermatitis.” The Journal of Applied Poultry Research, v. 26, no. 4, 2017, P. 518–528.

• Soliman, E., Sallam, N., and Abouelhassan, E., “Effectiveness of poultry litter amendments on bacterial survival and Eimeria oocyst sporulation.” Veterinary World, v. 11, no. 8, 2018, p. 1064-1073.

• van der Hoeven-Hangoor, E., Rademaker, C., Paton, N., Verstegen, M., and Hendriks, W., “Evaluation of free water and water activity measurements as functional alternatives to total moisture content in broiler excreta and litter.” Poultry Science, v. 93, no. 7, 2014, p. 1782-1792.