How often do you clean your coop?

[BeccaOH]

I've only had my coop house occupied for 2 days, and I'm already having a poop and water control issue. I have 5 chickens confined 12/7 for now. The roost is filthy every morning and night. The galvanized waterer is up on a pallet temporarily and gets pine in it all the time. I take it outside to clean and empty, but invariably I spill water in the litter. I'm starting the deep litter method, but the water is an issue for me.

 

[hinky toes]

Every morning about 8AM this is the list of cleaning chores at our house:
- collect eggs
- clean up messes (poop) in the nest box
- replace nesting material (wood chips/straw) if necessary
- remove more poop from the top of the nest box condo (I didn't make a slanted top to discourage roosting. Nuts!)
- sweep out from under the roost and add chips/straw

All waste material is moved outside thru a narrow clean out door in the coop and brought to the compost pile.

About every 5 days we remove all of the coop material (wood chips or straw) spray down the floors with water, squeegee the excess, let it dry, and replace with fresh stuff.

We have 26 birds and they like to go to the bathroom about a million times a day.

Complicated and busy? perhaps. But our birds have a nice place to live and the eggs are spotless.

 

[Colored Egg Farmer]

The last time I cleaned my coop was 5 months ago. It starting to smell but the deep litter method definitely helped it last long. I had about a foot of wood shavings.

 

[chicknsnbiskits]

This has been so very helpful! Thank you!

I have a "portable" nest box (it's laying on the floor of the doghouse-turned-coop), so I dump out the pine shavings and refill 2-3x/week. About 1-2x/month I rake out the rest of the little coop and compost the results.

I had an "aha!... oh, duh" moment this week.

I finally realized why the nest was getting so "pooed"... It's right under the perch... *smack self on head* Between that and the egg-eating issue we've been having lately, I moved the nest box to the very BACK of the coop, so now it's a little harder to find eggs, but at least there's #1 - no poop behind it #2 - darker = harder to see/eat eggs
AHA!...

 

[kalaim]

I have sand and they seem to just scratch and fluff it themselves?

I have 6 chickens in an 8x8 area. I haven't really had to clean it, they've only been in there for a couple of months though!

 

[Laurieks]

I want to get sand!

We have an adobe dirt floor, which has been fine for years. This year it has 'grown' several holes.

I believe we have successfully evicted the rat family who appeard this year. I was thinking of filling them in with gravel 'road base' to make it harder to dig through, and covering that with sand. Then I read that the sand should be a shallow layer.

What do you all think?

Thanks,
Laurie

 

[Oldhen70]

When it needs it

I dunno, I mean, what do you mean "clean". I scrape the poo off the droppings board under the roost every morning (elapsed time: 20 seconds) which removes about half the daily poo output from the coop right then and there. Once or twice a year when the birds are molting and I get a lot of feathers piling up, I rake the worst of 'em up along with any pooier spots of bedding and take that out to the compost pile. If I get a wet spot int he litter, like from spilling the waterer, I'll do a scoop or two with the shovel to remove that. Otherwise I pretty much just add litter to what's already there. It is not very time-consuming at all.

With only 3 chickens, as long as you build them a LARGE (for them) coop and LARGE WELL-DRAINED run, sanitation should not be a very big issue. Especially if you use a droppings board which I highly recommend.

I put weeds and garden weedings/trimmings (leaving out anything real toxic) into the run for them to scratch around in. Some people do use hay. Mind they have grit available if you're going to do that, and even with grit available some people have had birds get impacted crops from hay (although many have not; who knows exactly what makes the difference).

Keep the chickens, they're FUN

Good luck and have fun,

Pat

I use plexiglass for under the roost and it is so easy to clean with a scraper and it just rinses off with water.

 

[Oldhen70]

Can anyone elaborate on a droppings board? Is it as simple as it sounds? My guys are piling up thick wet poo under their perch. It's like bleachers (2 levels) though they usually crowd the upper level. Is it just a shelf a few inches below the perch? Should it be removable? Is there litter on it? How wide? Dumb questions but I've never seen one

hi, I have sand in the floor of the coop and it cleans really easy with a cat litter cleaner and I have plexiglass under the roost which is also really easy to clean with a scraper. Works for me! I clean the droppings on the floor and scrape the plexiglass every morning and it takes me all of 5 minutes or so. I am 70 so need all the help I can get. smile.

 

[kitkat5505]

I have a poop board under the roosts where they poop the most. I have a layer is Sweet PDZ on the board and just scoop it like a litter box a few times a week. I have pine shavings on the floor but they don't get very messy because of the poop board so I just fluff/stir them a bit when I clean up. I have a removable board to easily clean everything out of the coop into a wheelbarrow when I need to completely clean out everything. The run gets raked up when it starts to smell.

 

[KarennFallon]

Every day or two, after I have finished using the pooper scooper to clean the yard from my dogs, I head into the chicken run to clean up after my 12 chickens. I talk to the girls, cover any holes they dig near the fences, make sure feeders and waters are full, and keep an eye on general behavior. Inside the coop, I check for eggs from our only two layers as 10 haven't started yet, but I check the condition of the straw or shavings on the wood coop floor and nests. Every week or two, I rake up and sweep out the debris and shovel into the compost area I have just for their droppings. I then use DE to dust whole floor and nests at least once a month or as needed. Up until now, I've only had 3-4 chickens, but having added the young ones, this time frame may change with the bigger crowd. As it gets into late Fall, I start letting the droppings collect under the sleeping roosts, but sweep out the rest of floor and replace shavings, but not under roosts. The rising heat helps keep the hens warm when there's snow and freezing weather outside. I don't add shavings under the roosts to discourage sleeping or nesting under them. Learned this method from someone at BYC and it worked well last year. My coop is open year round 24/7. All the vents are open from Spring to late Fall, blocked off at winter as the 2'x2' door to run is always opened. This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but is working well for me. Good luck!!