How often do you clean your Coop?

[FirstTimeFlock]

We just got our chicks a week & a half ago. They are now 5.5 weeks old. I'm wondering how often to clean & change their bedding. We are using wood chips for bedding. I have some temporary roosts set up, but no poop tray underneath cause I think it would take up most of the coop floor space & just wasn't sure about that. Currently, I go out there once daily & try to scoop of all of the poop. It's getting a little easier now that their poops are getting bigger, but I'm wondering if there's an easier way. I started off thinking maybe I'd do the DLM, but I'm concerned about whether or not my coop has adequate ventilation. We are using a coop that was already in place, but I don't love it's design. (It's not full height & door opening is only 16 or 18" wide plus there were no roosts & I don't like where they placed the nesting boxes.) I am trying to make do with what we have tho. So as i said, I currently scoop out the poop I can see then add a bit of fresh wood chips to replace what I scooped out. If there are small bits that I can't get, I try to turn the bedding so that the small poop pieces fall to the bottom of the bedding.
Any advice or feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[KaylorFarms]

I clean mine every 2 weeks.

 

[FirstTimeFlock]

Do you have poop trays that you clean daily or do you just clean it every 2 weeks?

 

[KaylorFarms]

No I don't have any trays in mine, I just rake it out with my rake.

 

[KaylorFarms]

My coop fits 8 to 10 chickens.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I clean mine every 2 to 3 weeks, depending on the weather (more frequent when it's wet out!) No poop trays or anything, just rake it out completely and put in new bedding. However my coop is open air in build, only 1 of the walls is solid, so ventilation is not an issue.

 

[meetthebubus]

The chickens house and egg house is cleaned every morning, the entire run is once a week (if you want to see the run here's a video tour)

 

[ChickenMammX4]

We clean ours twice a year but we have a poopboard filled with PDZ that gets sifted out everyday or two. The coop is 8' x 9' wth 6 chickens.

 

[aart]

We just got our chicks a week & a half ago. They are now 5.5 weeks old. I'm wondering how often to clean & change their bedding. We are using wood chips for bedding. I have some temporary roosts set up, but no poop tray underneath cause I think it would take up most of the coop floor space & just wasn't sure about that. Currently, I go out there once daily & try to scoop of all of the poop. It's getting a little easier now that their poops are getting bigger, but I'm wondering if there's an easier way. I started off thinking maybe I'd do the DLM, but I'm concerned about whether or not my coop has adequate ventilation. We are using a coop that was already in place, but I don't love it's design. (It's not full height & door opening is only 16 or 18" wide plus there were no roosts & I don't like where they placed the nesting boxes.) I am trying to make do with what we have tho. So as i said, I currently scoop out the poop I can see then add a bit of fresh wood chips to replace what I scooped out. If there are small bits that I can't get, I try to turn the bedding so that the small poop pieces fall to the bottom of the bedding.
Any advice or feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

Post some pics of your coop and run, inside and out...
.....also put your location in your profile so we know what kind of climate you are dealing with.

There are tons of ways to deal with managing the manure.

 

[FirstTimeFlock]

Wasn't sure exactly how to describe the climate so I Googled it. Lol!

We are in Planting Zone 8b/9a (15-25°F).
The area experiences a temperate climate with mild, rainy winters and cool, dry summers. Due to its relatively dry summers, the Köppen climate classification places it at the northernmost limits of the Csb or cool-summer Mediterranean zone. Other climate classification systems, such as Trewartha, place it firmly in the Oceanic zone.
Summers here are unusually dry for the latitude and location. Heavy snowfall does occasionally occur during winter, but the mean maximum cover is only 0.2 metres (7.9 in). (We definitely beat that this year & it only stopped snowing a couple of weeks ago!)
The highest temperature ever recorded for the area was 40.6 °C (105 °F) on 16 July 1941. The coldest temperature ever recorded was −20.0 °C (−4 °F) on 30 December 1968.

This is the coop before I put the wood shavings down for bedding.

The door into the coop.

All of the pics I have of the run are apparently too large to upload so I'll have to try to take more pics tomorrow. You can kind of see parts of it in the following pics.