Today I found the girls smoking Cigarettes and Reading the Times

A few months ago my friend Jess said, "Hey I read an article about Coffee Chaff . You should come and get some for your chickens." Remember Jess and Elizabeth, they own the Austin Roasting Coffee. Seriously, buy some of their coffee. So good.


A few days ago I stopped by his roasting shop asking for a huge favor(see cannon ball post) and he said I really needed to take some of his chaff. I had read a few blog posts and articles about using it and decided I would finally give it a shot. Good stuff from The tangled Nest  

Chaff

I am using the deep litter method with wood shavings. It works well except I'm still having a lot of flies hanging around. Im pretty sure it's this wicked heat so to combat this I added some sweet pdz, a horse stall cleaner that should help with the smell and well, wet poop. I know gross. But maybe the chaff can help. So I added the layer of chaff to the existing layer of wood shavings and so far so good. Like the linked article said, a major drawback is because it is so light and airy, it easily gets scratched into the waterer. After a week of it being in the coop this is the only con I have found. I feel like maybe it's airiness will also be good for the girls and help keep them cooler, rather than piles and piles of wood shavings. 


The girls love it.  At first they were apprehensive, I snuck it in while they were free ranging. But after they got over the initial shock they were happy to scratch around and give it a try. By the end of the day they were dust bathing, loving the new litter. 


Contact your local coffee roaster and I'm sure they would be glad to give you some of their chaff. My lot was from one day of roasting (not sure of how many pounds) and it was enough to cover the whole bottom of the coop.  I'm going to try it for the summer and see how it fares vs. the wood shavings.  Thank god the caffeine content is out of this chaff or Im sure the girls would be pecking me for their next coffee run.