How long does it take YOU to clean your coop?

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ALJhappychicken

ALJhappychicken

Songster
5 Years
Jun 9, 2014
256
37
118
Hi, everyone! I just finished cleaning my big, old coop and thought it would be fun to know how long it takes y'all. It took me 1hr. and 30 mins. It's nice to see a clean coop! I have 15 hens and, as I said, a big coop. I havn't cleaned it in about two months or so. How long does it take YOU? :cool:
 
My coop is 5' x 8' and when I do a thorough cleaning it takes me around one hour.....whew!!
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We do a 3 minute clean of the run daily, and scoop the worst and turn the bedding in the coop, which takes about 2 minutes. At the same time we mix the days mash and check the waterers, so about 10 minutes of maintenance daily. We've only emptied the coop once, although it wasn't really necessary, but we wanted to do a good scrubbing and empty out everything. Took about an hour, but I think it's something that won't need to be done more often than maybe 2-3 times a year. We have 8 chickens now, but up until Monday it was still 9.
 
vehve said:
We do a 3 minute clean of the run daily, and scoop the worst and turn the bedding in the coop, which takes about 2 minutes. At the same time we mix the days mash and check the waterers, so about 10 minutes of maintenance daily. We've only emptied the coop once, although it wasn't really necessary, but we wanted to do a good scrubbing and empty out everything. Took about an hour, but I think it's something that won't need to be done more often than maybe 2-3 times a year. We have 8 chickens now, but up until Monday it was still 9.
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Wow, vehve, that's very thorough! Do you ever need to empty the whole coop, or is that short, daily routine all the coop cleaning you do?
:duc
 
ALJhappychicken said:
Wow, vehve, that's very thorough! Do you ever need to empty the whole coop, or is that short, daily routine all the coop cleaning you do?
duc.gif
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Like I said, so far only the one time, but they've only been in there for a little over two months now. We cleaned it out after 6 weeks, mainly to see how the structures were doing under the bedding, and sort of as a ceremony in anticipation of our first egg layers coming online. Here are some pics of the coop after cleaning, and after refilling it with bedding.



When we emptied the stuff out, it was still completely dry, and didn't put out a bad odor. The peat moss that we mostly have in there (together with about 1/3 of pine shavings) really ties up smell nicely. I also wanted to get the stuff out of there to get a composting experiment going with it. I think we'll clean it a bit before winter the next time. I should be getting a huge load of hemp bedding in a few weeks, so I'm going to start adding a bit of that in there to compensate whatever we lose when picking the visible poops from under the roost. It should put out less dust than the peat, and be more absorbent and quicker composting than the pine shavings.

*Edit* The most important factor when I designed the coop was that it was to be easy to maintain, I really didn't want awkward working positions or a lot of unnecessary work. I can fit a wheelbarrow under the service door you see open in these pictures, and the board comes loose, so I can just scrape everything out. I did find it better to use a bucket though, because that way I could layer the stuff into the compost better, filling some preprocessed compost in between each bucketfull and wetting the layers.
 
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I am using deep litter method in the coop, so the bedding is just turned/added as needed and that takes all of about three minutes a few times a week. The poop boards take anywhere from 5-10 minutes to clean. Waterers are given a quick rinse/clean and filled every other day (or more as needed) and that takes about five minutes, if that. The feeder is filled about once a week or so. I'm a minimalist/simplifier when it comes to things like this - I *could* make this a big, involved and lengthy process, but I'd rather spend the time enjoying my birds (and other animals and family) than making it more complicated than it needs to be. Days when the poop boards aren't in need of attention, the bedding doesn't need to be turned and the waterers/feeder are in good shape the only "chore" time I spend on the birds is turning them out in the morning and closing the coop up in the evening - but I spend plenty of time just enjoying them and watching my son enjoy them.
 
My coop/chicken fort (see avatar) has natural ground for the floor. I scrape about 1 inch off the top with a flat shovel about every 6 to 8 weeks.

It makes the best fertilizer that money can or can't buy. No composting, just pure nitrogen rich chicken s***. Takes about 20 minutes for my 60 square feet pen.
 
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