Coop cleaning

[Stephine]

Please forgive my ignorance but what is a poop board? I'm new to raising chickens and I have 11 hens in a 6 foot by 10 foot chained link kennel. They have nesting boxes and roosting branches. I'm I doing it right? Lol

They will need some walls and a roof to provide shelter from wind, rain and sun, especially where they roost. The neating boxes can not serve that purpose, they are only for laying eggs in them and you don't want the hens bedding down in them, because they will soil them. Also make sure that you have no predators that can crawl through or reach through (in case of racoons) the wire mesh in your area, or you will need to cover the coop in hardware cloth instead. There are lots of pictures of homemade coops on BYC - take a look around!

 

[Gramastina]

At YWAM farm I learned about LAB, lactobacillus spray that puts good bugs in coop that eat the poop.

 

[scotty1980]

I change the shavings once a week to keep it fresh. Thinking of changing to chopped up hemp as it should compost down better.

 

[Hokum Coco]

How often do you clean out your coop? i.e. replace the pine shavings, scrub everything down etc.

I have tried most all the above mention bedding and deep litter method. I also am a big fan of poop boards my boards are only 3½ inches away from the removable roost (I clean them 2 times a week I have 24 hens in a 4x8 coop). The close proximity of the poop boards saves eggs from breaking or cracking when they are laid through the night.

This year I am trying a different tack. I placed a steel wire grid suspended 3½ inches above my covered vinyl floor (the height of a 2x4). The raw hen manure drops through the grid and does not come in contact with my birds what so ever.

The positive results so far I have found are:

1) My chickens feet and birds plumage in general are cleaner.
2) The nest boxes stay cleaner longer
3) My eggs are cleaner as well
4) I eliminated the cost of bedding
5) My chicken manure is better for composting.
6) The manure dries to a hard pellet and for the most part just rolls of the vinyl flooring into the compost bin.
7) Where the coop is well ventilated the well dried manure gives of no noticeable ammonia smell so far.
8) My boots stay cleaner when I enter the coop

I especially like this method for the warmer months when the hens spend the majority of the time in the run.
I may revert back to the deep litter method through the winter when my hens are confined to the coop. The wire grid may prove taxing to their feet time will tell. I have yet to clean the floor area of my coop it has been over a month.

 

[LouieM414]

I should have mentioned that. My coop does have sides and a roof.

 

[catinthecoop]

Equine Fresh is pine sawdust made into a soup, then extruded into pellets, then super dried. There is no dust, and you should Not follow the directions on the package bc they tell you mist them down before using. This forces you to use them up prematurely and buy more. I have used them for my horses for about 4 years now and the way that they soak up urine twice and keep down the ammonia is amazing. One horse produces a great deal of urine. They break down first and it looks like grape nuts that have gotten wet, but it is still a powder. The 2nd time they soak up urine and stay wet. This is what happens when used in a horse's stall.
For the birds it takes a lot longer than 2 days for them to break down. They keep down the ammonia in the bedding on the bottom of the coop. Last time I cleaned the bottom on my coop I discovered that they were still usable and smelled great. The other bedding was soiled on top of them.
There is nothing that smells as bad as a dirty chicken building, no matter what the size, and the animals housed in it have to breathe that in. Newbies think that you must clean them up all of the time, but that isn't really necessary, as long as they are cleaned up on a regular basis.
This product goes by several names, but they all come in a 40 pound bag and it sells for $5.00-$7.00/package. I use one package for my coop every time I rebed.

I use the pellet sawdust bedding for my horse too, and would like to use it in my coop. I think this post answers my questions re: do you put them in wetted down or not, answer being not. Second question: how big is your coop that you put one bag in?

 

[ducks4you]

@catinthecoop here is my prefab coop:
https://www.ruralking.com/large-chicken-coop.html
The inside is about 4' x 6'
I have never wetted down Equine Fresh. Some time after I was regularly using it I read THEIR instructions. They also recommend 8 bags/horse stall and I guess they think that it would hurt your poor horse, "Fluffy" put down straight. I do not like to waste bedding, so I only use it where my horses pee. My 3 horses have their own pee and poo spots in their stalls and as You know, you do Not have to completely strip a stall OR a coop if you keep up with them.
For my two geldings I use two bags in their pee spot and I cover with either yesterday's shavings in the stall or straw, and I only use one bag for my mare. My stalls are odd shaped, 10 x 13, 12 x 12 and 10 x 12 bc I created them in my barn which only had 1 wooden stall wall to use. I bought round pen pieces including two round pen gate panels and one 13' gate. It started sagging so I added a gate wheel to it.
https://www.ruralking.com/speeco-tall-gate-wheel-gl161170.html
I use Equine Fresh as the first layer under my chicken's roost boards, then I dump Medium Pine Shavings in the middle of the coop floor, which I added a piece of vinyl floor to when I assembled it, to keep the wooden floor from wearing out too early. There used to be posts here with tips like that, but this site is so busy that it might be a little harder to find them than when I joined in 2009.
You ALSO know the animals will spread it out so you don't have to waste any time doing that yourself. My chickens end up covering up the pellets themselves, but if you check the next day and they haven't you can spread it out yourself. I like the floor covered with bedding and sometimes my hens lay a clutch of eggs on the bedding instead of their nest boxes.
I used to do CW Reenacting and I met a reenactor who spent a summer mucking stalls at a training facility. He and another worker had to clean 50 stalls/day and one would muck out while the other did the bedding. He said that it took 20 minutes/stall. This was before I had my own place so I listened when he said that they dumped the bedding in one stall and moved on. Horses pace and move around their stalls. Chickens dig and scratch. Both of them use their natural behavior and help us save time in our day.

 

[Hokum Coco]

Please forgive my ignorance but what is a poop board?

its a board that is under the roost bar to catch the poop

I have my removable 2x4 roost only 3½" away from the poop board and it also serves as a safety surface to catch eggs that are laid though the night.

 

[catinthecoop]

@ducks4you,
I'm doing about 30 stalls a day at the moment so I've got it down to a science, totally get what you mean. I put about 1 bag a week in my horse's stall, I do wet them down but that's because they don't seem to break down as fast as I would like, esp in the summer when horses are out more.
Plan to put Black Jack down on the coop floor to seal it up, then I will start with maybe 2 bags of pellets. Probably do a poop tray/board with PDZ/Sand that I can scoop daily/every other day.

 

[PraiseGod]

[COLOR=FF0000]I have my removable 2x4 roost only 3½" away from the poop board and it also serves as a safety surface to catch eggs that are laid though the night.[/COLOR]

mine is 5" above or so with 1 1/2" PDZ. Definitely has saved eggs from breaking.