How often to clean coop? - Page 4

NTR.........it's play sand. The flecks you see in it is dirt. These chickens I have, have a spot beside my shed that stays dry, even when it rains where they take a dirt shower. Mine don't take a dust bath, they take a dirt shower. They look like little rototillers.  All that dirt flying is all under the feathers, but for some reason they all like to get on the roost then do the shaking to get it off. The first time they did that I was crushed. My clean sand all dirty. But after the first pooping the dirt did bother me any longer. My "sifter" is just not fine enough to get it all.

  DLM is fine for some, but I have to clean the poop out of my coop. Just like when I had Arabians, I cleaned the stall everytime I was at the barn. My horses didn't stand in crap.

"transmogrified" Someone is a Calvin and Hobbes fan.

I clean my coop out at least every other month.  I have a 4'x6' coop with 9 bantams.  If maure storage is an issue, you could give it away as compost.  I have people who take my coop poop along with horse and goat manure.  They are able to produce high quality compost from it too.

My entire coop gets cleaned out 2x per year. I add fresh (deep litter) wood shavings in late Fall (Nov) and late Spring (May). About 2-3 months into each cycle, I add some DE and another couple of inches of litter. I toss more scratch into the coop about every week or so and the chickens mix it up.

I plan to add a short divider between the roosting area and the nest box area to keep the poopier side divided from the nesting area.

Pics to follow,

--Hugh

This is what I do too.

DLM with  pine shavings and some shavings on the poop board. I spot clean the poop board and roost and any big clumps of poop on the floor each morning using a 2 inch putty knife and dustpan - takes less than 2 minutes and it goes into a 5 gal bucket that gets dumped into compost when it fills up..  I add DE and additional shavings every couple of weeks - it doesn't smell! 

i clean mine about once a month. i have only six chickens so it is a medium sized coop. i rake out the straw sweep the dust then put an ample supply of new hay for them to rummage in.  any time after a month the coop really starts to stink! pe-u!

I am currently building a larger coop around my small coop, so I can clean it better.  I plan to use the deep litter method.  What exactly is a droppings board?

It's a flat surface onto which the poop drops during the night when the chickens are up on their roost fast asleep.  (Droppings is just another word for poop.)  They poop a lot during the night, and the poo is either going to land on the roost board that their feet are on, or if their rear ends are positioned beyond the roost board (or pole, or tree branch, or whatever they're roosting on) then the poo drops down onto the floor of the coop.  If you don't use the deep litter method with pine shavings there on the floor to compost the poo, then the poo needs to be cleaned up off the floor or it's going to stink.   It's easier to collect it from a droppings board that's easy to reach. Some droppings boards are installed so that they can be withdrawn out of the coop right through the exterior wall of the coop.   Kind of like a drawer with a drawer pull or drawer knob.    Do a search on BYC for photos of droppings boards and you'll see.   Many (perhaps most) backyard chickenkeepers believe that if you use the Deep Litter Method, you DO NOT NEED a droppings board.

I put dropping boards up last week and gained so much more usable space-they don't ever go under the roosts and mess around in the poos mess anyway so why not use that space!!! I gained a place to put my trash cans I use for feed and the lids aren't covered with poo anymore and I built a place for my broody hens and their babies when I have them--a much better use of space. the pine shavings are a little sparse in this pic-I had just taken some out and hadn't replaced it yet. And that is less than a weeks droppings        -   I plan on cleaning weekly.