RentACoop Jute Brooder Liners for Big Red Barn Brooder (Pack of 4)

This comes in a 4-pack folded neatly of perfectly rectangular cut-to-size sheets of approximately 1/3" thick natural jute fabric. It is strong, not easy to tear but can be cut with strong scissors if you need it for a different size enclosure than what these were pre-cut for by Rent-A-Coop.
Although I don't have a brooder going now to test this with chicks, I have raised duck and chicken chicks before and I can say... this should NOT be your only floor lining, it will get ruined very quickly. The chicks will scratch at it (they scratch at everything) and at best it will tear apart the fibers (not so bad) but likely to get caught on their toe claws or even beaks if they try to peck at the different colored bits. However, it would be a great lining for UNDER some wood shavings, pellets, or whatever else you would use for frequent replacement when it gets wet or poopy. That way when the chicks scratch it up there will still be a natural surface beneath and not plastic or the wood floor of your brooder that isn't as easy to clean. You could lift out the entire pad and all the stuff on top, shake it off, and if it's clean enough reuse it, or replace with another one.

My intended purpose this time around is to cut to size for
1) my bearded dragon enclosure
2) my conure cage

With the lizard, it's a replacement for loose wood shavings that, when he's on the hunt for bugs I put in there, sometimes get swallowed up with or instead of the bug. This will prevent the bugs from burrowing and won't cause any bedding swallows.
The with conures... they were immediately interested in the material as soon as I took it out of the package and it kept them occupied longer than many other things. I expect it'll be more similar to the brooder, they'll tear it up and eventually cover it with poop.... but in this house we don't do the "change their bedding every day" and it'll go a lot longer than newspapers.

At over $10 per piece, it's not exactly cheap, but if you can use it well to extend the lifespan with your critters it may be worth it. And if you have a vegetable garden, you could use the discards as compost or even lay it over the soil, cut a hole, and plant young plants directly under it for nutrition and protection.

Pros: good nonslip, natural, and absorbent base for the birds.
cons: unlike shavings that flip, turn, and get moved about the poop just sits on top and accumulates. This leads to dirty conditions and the birds having balls of poop stuck to their feet that will need to be soaked to be removed. Made it a week after getting day old birds before changing it the first time, made it 3 days before changing it the 2nd time(above photo). Will need to be changed more frequently as birds grow, eat more, and poop more.
Takeaway: would/will buy again to use as base and add shavings on top.

I think this is a good concept but it's not good for chicks. My chicks scratch it up into balls of fluff and it doesn't absorb poop. So the poop sticks to the chick's feet and then the fluff strings stick to their feet. That's not good. I spent a half hour wiping poop and pulling strings off their little feet after one day of use. It also didn't take long for them to scratch all the way through the liner. I ended up tossing it after 1 day and adding pine shavings.
I really wanted to use these because they sounded so good. The chicks are 5 weeks old. Are they just too old?
If there are any tips or anything to make the rest I have usable I would love to hear.

These are a game changer when it comes to bedding for our chicks. Way less dust than typical bedding! Very happy and will continue to use when we get new batches of chicks!

These Jute Liners worked great in my brooder. They made cleaning the brooder a much easier process than with shavings/newspaper. With day old chicks a liner held up for two weeks, after thatvi needed to replace them weekly. I just rolled it up, cleaned up what was left behind with a dust pan and put a new one in. I didn't even remove the chicks, just moved them frome one side to the other when removing and inserting the liner.

I love using these for my brooders as a base, especially during cold months. They help with keeping the area clean as well.. The size is perfect.

I've had chickens for years. This is my first time using the rent a coop brooder and these liners. The liners are not good. I used it with shavings over the liner. The chicks dug a big hole in the liner, at 1.5 week of age. The digging made the fibers lose, tangled, and a hazard. As a tangle hazard and as a hazard if eaten.

needed some new liners for our chicken coop and these worked great, the chicken responded well to the liners and have had no issues with them at all.

These liners are great in the brooder! They are easy to use and absorb a lot. The babies seem to love them too!

I used this for all my awkward flower pots and it worked out fantastic! I could cut it anyway I wanted. It's thick and worked perfectly!

We were looking for something to use on the bottom of our large crate enclosure for moving. We will be keeping our chicken inside this large crate without a floor in a garage so we needed something to put down that would be easy to clean up. These liners are large and easy to lay down. They are thick enough to hold onto poop and letting our chicken wipe their feet, but not hard to pick up when needed. These would be amazing inside of brooders too. I have seen so many horror stories of people using pine shavings or something and chicks getting hurt, also paper towels are just a pain and I wouldnt want to use them. Great durable product.

I was thinking these would stay in one piece, but the chicks begin to pull them apart as they get older. I found the same with the nest box liners. That's not a bad thing, just a curious thing. Even shredded they may pretty decent bedding material. Not sure I will order them again, but it was a neat experiment. It did prove the "liner" to be decent brooder bedding.

These work OK. They we're more than big enough to fit the dog cage we were using as a brooder. But it was easy enough to trim it down. I do really appreciate that it kept the mess inside the cage whereas sand or shavings ended up everywhere outside the cage. That said I don't think I'd use any kind of cage as an inside brooder again because of the mess. The problem with this type of bedding is that they poop on it and it just stays right on top for them to walk in and its stinky. Maybe if you don't handle or hold your chicks ever this might not be an issue for you but I want my chick's to get to know me so I spend a lot of time with them. So I think I'll stick to sand or pine shavings for my bedding.

Having a broader is about 100 times stinkier than I had anticipated. Those tiny birds reek. I love these sheets! Replacing the whole sheet is so convenient and quick! Much easier than moving the birds, deciding how to clean everything without using harsh chemicals, waiting for the broader to dry after I scrub it, etc. I can just throw the used sheet onto my compost pile and replace it with a fresh one! Easy peasy, and no bad smell!

We have inside pet ducks. Put these down in the nesting area and they began tearing it up almost immediately.

Attempted to take outside and rinse it clean with plan to let dry in sun to reuse. Did not come anywhere near clean and got so heavy with the water

--RentACoop Jute Brooder Liners for Big Red Barn Brooder (Pack of 4)--
UPDATE after using for a couple of weeks: These are growing on me. Crusty poopy feet kicked in within only a couple days and that's no good for anybody anytime. They could now have shavings so we soaked feet to be able to get all the poop off and added a bit of shavings over the top. Now everyone is happy. We've been cleaning off the liner and re-using it as these are pretty expensive per each liner and they've not been too mucked up. My rating remains at 4 stars.
ORIGINAL REVIEW: I will be reserving the use of these for the youngest of chicks in the brooder. Easier than newspaper and less slippery for the chicks for the first week before you switch to shavings. Shavings move around, turn, and mix around keeping the poop mess mixed about like with the big girls. These are more like newspaper where the poop just sits on top and the chicks get dirtier walking through it. Suppose you could use shavings over the top after they are a week old, but seems redundant once they can have shavings.

I got these sheets of jute fiber to put inside my nest boxes. One of the boxes is slanted and allows the eggs to roll into a collection bin. These are thin enough that they do not obstruct the rolling of the eggs like pine shavings do and allow the chickens to not have to sit on the metal bottom. The sheets were easy to cut to size and stay relatively clean inside the nest boxes. These are large sheets so even if I have to dispose of a couple if they become to soiled to rinse, I will have more to replace them. Would probably work good for young chicks in a brooder box as well but I can attest first hand to them working perfectly in nesting boxes.

I'm using these as a base layer in my brooder with straw on top. I find that having a liner makes cleanup easier as I can pull out as much straw as possible then remove the liner to get the rest. It is also softer on the feet than the wood coop bottom and more insulated.

I tried using just these (or similar) liners and I don't like them by themselves since the poop just sits on top and I find that the chicks and chickens get dirtier even if I scoop the poop several times a day. Also when the chicks peck at the liners they tend to get the fibers wrapped around their feet and beaks.

I don't have a Big Red Barn but these are a nice big size and are easy enough to trim with heavy shears into the size I need. Whatever is left over and the used liners go right into the compost bin.

Tip: Don't check these out initially in your office if the vacuum cleaner is broken. It's not a huge mess, but they do shed some.
We've had chickens before, and after a little break were ready to get some more this year. These mats seemed the perfect solution to the dealing with shavings that we used to do - particularly the cleaning out of the dirty ones. Roll up a used one, toss it onto the compost pile (nice!) and roll out a clean new one. However, one of the benefits of shavings was that when the chicks walk around on them their chickie poops are getting turned under so they track them a little less into their water and such. We COULD scatter some shavings on top of the mat, but if we're doing that we may as well just use shavings in the first place. Plus, these mats are so good that it's hard to think of going through four of them in six weeks. There are so many other lasting things we can use them for.
So we're going to do a switch and try the shavings again and see what brilliant options we can come up with both in the greenhouse and the garden. It wouldn't be cost effective to use these instead of cardboard that we lay down under the chips, but my wife and daughter have some ideas on what else these could be good for.
These work well with the chicks! And I think some people will love them, but for us we're going to go the route described above.
Thank you for reading, I hope it's been helpful.

Worked pretty well for when we’re moving our chickens around to clean their coop and stuff

It gets all tangled up in there feet. For the price I am going to stick with shavings and hay.

These jute brooder liners are a great idea and well executed. They are large, provide a really nice surface for new chicks to walk on, and they do a great job controlling odors. We traditionally line large cardboard boxes with a garbage bag (to stop the wet from seeping through) and then newspaper on top of the plastic bag to soak up the moisture. This works fine to save our floors, but doesn’t do much to control the odors and I don’t think it provides a very good surface for the newly hatched checks to walk on. This jute is a much better surface for them to walk on and does a great job controlling the odors. The jute mats are large enough to fit a pretty good size box and they are easy to change when they get dirty and too soiled. Unfortunately, the price is too high for me to consider them a viable long term alternative to the good newspaper. I certainly am not suggesting that the cost should be lower, but only that I wished it could be lower so I could use these mats. If price is no object this is a great product.

These work out fine as a base in the nesting box but not as the top layer. I had to put wood shavings back over it so the chicks would stop pulling it all apart. Because I ended up having to use shavings anyway, it didn't really make cleanup that much easier, though I don't have to clean as often. These liners are relatively expensive compared to hemp pads so I am not sure I will get them again.

Chicks will destroy this quickly. And it doesn’t look healthy. The fibers get wrapped around their beaks and feet. Not a fan.

When the chicks got a bit older they scratched it up. Had to clean it out couple times a day. Would use it again for sure