Best ways to keep poo smell down?

I have 15 Cornish Rock Cross Chicks and I am a little nervous about the amount of poo to come. I live in town and am not exactly allowed to have them. But I have a very large back yard and garden and I compost everything. One of the reasons I wanted chickens is for the pootilizer. But I have read some post about how bad it can get?? What are the best ways to keep the smell down and still allow me to compost the poo?

I compost mine and I haven't really noticed any smell. I've been doing the deep litter method all winter and cleaned out the coop a couple of weeks ago when we had a spell of nice weather. I composted the wood chips too.

If you regularly add other things to it, it doesn't seem to smell much. I'm not supposed to have my chickens either.

To me the smell is not too bad for the chicks (I also have ducks and that's a whole different story) but I also clean their house every 2 or 3 days. Just remember that the chickens are going to poop where they are roosting/sitting in the hen house. I have my roost built on only one side of the house so everyone sits together and most of the poop stays isolated in one area. I just use a flat shovel and scoop it out then spray the floor off.

I won't keep cornish cross chicks in the house, the smell is too much by a week or so old. However, outside in their tractor when they are older and pooping even more, I don't even notice a smell. We are going to use deep litter method in our brooder from now on, so hopefully that will keep the smell down but the brooder will be outside from now on so it shouldn't be an issue anyway.

The key is good ventilation and moisture control. 1) If you have waterers inside your coop, spot clean all water spills AT LEAST once a day and minimize them by placing waterers off the floor/bedding (on a concrete block, wood stand, etc.) or hanging them in a way the chickens can't tip them. 2) make sure there is sufficient air flow to dry out the poo, and turn your bedding regularly (for deep litter method). If you throw down a little bit of scratch grains your birds will turn it for you. BUT ... 3) if your feeder is in your coop, don't let processed feed build up in the bedding. It's absorbent and will quickly spoil if it gets moist. I keep a "scratch tray" around my feeder. It's just a square of ply with 1X4 sides sized about twice as big around as my feeder, but it's been a great food saver and odor eliminator. Any feed the chickens drop out of the feeder end up on the ply and gets "scratched" up. I can scrape up any that isn't (along with any other "deposits" that end up there) every day when I brush down the roosts and clean the poop board, and that brings up 4) put a poop board under your roosts! Even if it's just bare plywood, it still makes cleaning - and thus odor control - so much easier. Many people cover theirs with linoleum. I put shallow sides on mine and keep sand in it. I can scoop the poop into my cleaning bucket in seconds, and just add a bit of sand when necessary. Saves time, labor, and money, and keeps odors down.

Once what's in the coop goes out to the compost, the same principles apply - good ventilation and moisture control. If your compost pile is not too large, ventilation involves turning the pile with a rake or pitchfork often. I have several piles around the farm, each at a different stage of "cooking". Older piles are too big to turn to their base, so I insert pvc pipes with holes tapped into them through the piles at about a 45 degree angle downward from the sides to the center. Air flows down the pipes and keeps the aerobic activity going. As for moisture control, that's a siting issue. Don't put your compost where it's going to stand in water when it rains, and in times of excessive rain you may even want to throw a tarp over the pile (but stake the bottom edge out from the pile to allow ventilation - I keep mine covered and add water with a hose mister when things get too dry). That said, if you can devise a way to collect the moisture the pile produces as it cooks, that's the "mother load"! Dilute this "black gold" in water and feed it to your garden for some of the best production you've ever seen. I built up shallow mounds of hard-packed clay soil under my piles, with drainage channels formed into their outer edges. I lined these with plastic and directed the liquid drainage into partially sunken 5 gallon buckets with rain shields over them. Once a bucket is about half full, I can lift it out, add water, and feed the garden. It's a way to reap some benefits from your compost even before it's ready to add to the soil.

Anyway, didn't mean for this to run this long. Hope you find at least some of it useful. Best of luck with the new chooks.

Have you built their coop and 'poop board' yet? If not, build the poop board at an angle, so you can spray it off with the hose, and it should be made to exit into a bucket. This is so easy - 10 seconds of water each morning, less than a flush in the house. Dump the bucket into the compost, or around a tree, and that takes care of most of your smell. If you have sufficient ground for them to run in, the outdoor occasional poops don't seem to build up a smell. (for me, anyway - but Ionly have 7 hens)

However, if you notice smell, there are products at the feed store that cut down on smell.

What set-up do you have? In the brooder I just kept layering more hay (I use that instead of shavings cause I have loose from the horses) on top of the poo. It was kinda thick when I moved them out of the brooder, but didn't smell much. I just dumped the whole mess on the compost pile and will pile horse poo on top. Now, I have them in the coop with shavings on the ground. I noticed today the ammonia smell is getting strong, I'll just layer more shavings on the current layer tomorrow--yeah payday!!! Probably buy more chicks when I'm at the grange tomorrow Also remember, if you're moving them in a tractor, the smell will be cut down if you move them frequently ie daily. And it's only 8 weeks or so!

I would love to be able to put them in a tractor! Just move them around my garden and do the spring weeding for me. But I live in a small town with old school laws. I have a coop built in my tool sheld by my garden. I dont have layers (yet) so the set up is kinda temporary. I put a tarp down under the shavings to protect my floor. I am going to just keep adding bedding and put the food on a rubber mat that will catch the spilt food. I may use some kind of mat for the water also to help keep things dry.

On a side note I just got them today. I watched them eat, eat and eat some more so long that when one of them was falling asleep I thought something was wrong with it. I cant believe how much they can eat.

Probiotics help, though it won't take away all of the smell. I notice a difference with my pullets when they get probiotics every few days, and when they don't.

i sprinkle some DE on the new bedding each day - it dries the poo out quickly and greatly cuts down on smell and also flies,mites, and lice.