How many ways can I clean my coop?

Hi,
My coop is very dirty. There's poop everywhere and it's pretty gross. I have sand bedding for my fairly large coop, and it's really expensive so I don't want to throw it away and put new sand bedding. I have four full grown hens. I have already made a sand filtering contraption out of an old shovel and some hardware cloth. I've been using it regularly, but I need a few ways to thoroughly clean my entire coop without having to replace the sand. Can you guys share some ways you thoroughly clean your coops if you have sand bedding too?
Thanks

The best advice I can give you is to build a poop board under the roost. Trust me in that it'll take 90% of the work you're doing out of the process. Hens tend to poo like crazy when they sleep and that's where most if the mess comes from. Do you have a run attached for them to go outside during the day or are they in the coop all the time?

We tried bedding sand in the bottom of our coop also and it was just a mess to deal with. We quickly tossed all that out into the yard and now we have pine shavings in there. In our poop board is Stable-Dri, others use Sweet PDZ and we would have also if I could have found it locally.


We have 7 birds in our coop at the moment and when I went to scoop the poop using a cat litter scoop this morning it took less than 3 minutes.

RichnSteph

Oh I needed to add that once every few months we rake all the shavings out into the yard and do a complete clean with a cleaning solution that my wife found online.

RIchnSteph

My coop acts like a run and a coop at the same time. It is pretty big and spacious. It's like a little mansion for my chickens. Anyways, I always let them free range.

Silvey17 said:

My coop acts like a run and a coop at the same time. It is pretty big and spacious. It's like a little mansion for my chickens. Anyways, I always let them free range.

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Hmm.... If they are free ranging then your coop/run shouldn't be all that dirty from the droppings. Would you be able to post a picture of the coop? As I said most of the poo happens at night while they are on the roost. A poop board stops all that mess from hitting the floor and being walked in and scattered.

edit: How big is the coop?

RichnSteph said:

The best advice I can give you is to build a poop board under the roost. Trust me in that it'll take 90% of the work you're doing out of the process. Hens tend to poo like crazy when they sleep and that's where most if the mess comes from. Do you have a run attached for them to go outside during the day or are they in the coop all the time?

We tried bedding sand in the bottom of our coop also and it was just a mess to deal with. We quickly tossed all that out into the yard and now we have pine shavings in there. In our poop board is Stable-Dri, others use Sweet PDZ and we would have also if I could have found it locally.


We have 7 birds in our coop at the moment and when I went to scoop the poop using a cat litter scoop this morning it took less than 3 minutes.

RichnSteph

Click to expand...

Gee, I need to speed things up a bit in Motel Chix - takes me 5 minutes to do mine! Of course, I have 3 more birds than you do, so that would probably make sense....3 extra birds, 2 additional minutes. Guess I'm not so slow after all!

I agree with this advice 100%. I have a poop board under the roost and it catches most of it. Using Sweet PDZ on the poop board and deep litter consisting of pine shavings, leaves, grass clippings and garden refuse in the summer on the floor has kept my coop cleaner than I imagined it would. In fact, it's so easy to do that when Ken and I leave town for his meetings and are gone for 3-4 days, responsibility for the chickens falls on our grandchildren's shoulders. Evan is 9 and Katie just turned 9 this month, but they've done it all year and done a bang-up job. I don't even have to check up on how they did anymore. I come home and eggs are marked with the date they were laid in pencil, in the cartons and in the fridge, the feeders are full, the water is clean and full, and the poop board is clean. That's chicken keeping simplified! Just scoop the poop into the bucket, turn over the litter so that any poop on the floor falls to the bottom for decomposing, and done!

I use deep litter in the run as well.

Thanks everyone for your advice. I am making preparations for a poop board under my roosts.