Cleaning chicken coop

[CluckinHooligan]

What is easiest to clean in the chicken roost? Sand, hay, or cedar shavings? We are currently using straw and aren't sure if there are any more efficient solutions.

 

[gamebirdsonly]

Shavings I think are the best.

 

[daddyman]

We are currently using Sweet PDZ. It is sold as a horse stall refresher and has been working very well for our six hens.

This works well as the hen house is about 3' x 5', so two bags cover the floor nicely. Cleanup is done with a wire strainer, which lifts out the poop, and lets the PDZ granules fall back to the floor, to continue absorbing whatever yucky smells most people associate with chicken coops.

We had a bunch of friends over and they all commented that the coop did not smell. They all expected something to smell bad, and were impressed that there was nothing disagreeable wafting about.

For the run, we just throw down some lawn clippings once a week, and let the hens work this over for about five days. I re-rake and pile it so they can scratch through it a couple of times, and then rake it all up and throw it on the compost pile, and start over.

 

[iwiw60]

What is easiest to clean in the chicken roost? Sand, hay, or cedar shavings? We are currently using straw and aren't sure if there are any more efficient solutions.

Yes, absolutely Sweet PDZ Granular is the absolute best solution for roost area! Here's what I built...a roost bar/poop tray setup, best thing I ever did!!!



And I built it all by myself to boot!!

My roost bar is removable..it sits in those metal hanger thingies so it can be removed for cleaning if need be. In the morning after the girls are out of the coop to the run I just take my kitty litter scoop (you can just see it up on the far left there) and sift and dump into the droppings bucket. Takes me all of 3-4 minutes...done! Yes, it is an expense up front when buying a bag of it, but the benefits far outweigh that. My coop always smells fresh!

 

[elisaliv]

I'm just now learning about this Sweet PDZ stuff! I have horses now but will be getting chickens at some point and have been researching everything I can think of so we are prepared when we begin building the coop. I was looking up sand and came across this lovely post.

Could I just put it down in the whole bottom of the coop? Or would it be better to make a poop bar/tray setup and use sand for the coop floor? I'm excited to try it for now in my horse stalls!

 

[hitchyourwagon]

I built a roost and poop tray with PDZ powder as described and it works great. Can clean it out once per week with a cat litter shovel. It only takes about 15 minutes to clean it and there are no odors. I have about a dozen birds so they generate a lot of manure
Started putting some down when we clean horse stalls as a base under the shavings. Works well here to neutralize the ammonia smell from the urine.

 

[iwiw60]

I'm just now learning about this Sweet PDZ stuff! I have horses now but will be getting chickens at some point and have been researching everything I can think of so we are prepared when we begin building the coop. I was looking up sand and came across this lovely post.

Could I just put it down in the whole bottom of the coop? Or would it be better to make a poop bar/tray setup and use sand for the coop floor? I'm excited to try it for now in my horse stalls!

Boy, to put PDZ on the whole bottom of the coop...yikes! Would that be expensive. The stuff is around $20 a bag (and they ain't that big!) .. I use pine wood shavings on my floor with the PDZ in the poop tray.