Coop Maintainence

[PhatChicks]

Hello everyone! Angie here, in Fruitport, MI. I have a couple of questions for y'all.

1. How often do you clean your coop? I use wood shavings in the coop and change it completely once a week. I have two roosts and no poop boards because of spacing. I have 7 chicks (plenty of room for them). I wondered if I should be changing the bedding more often or not.

2. How often do you rake out your run? When cleaning my coop, I rake out the run of lost feathers and poop and any other thing that gets tossed around in there. Should it be raked out more often?

Use DE powder in the coop and run to cut down on bugs.

3. My chicks are about 5 months old. I keep hearing about "the first egg squawk" but have no idea what to listen for. I haven't found any eggs yet and am pretty sure they haven't laid them elsewhere. How do I get them to start laying eggs or to let ME know when they've laid one?

Thanks for the advice!

 

[cafarmgirl]

How often you clean depends on how many birds and how much space they have,so just clean as needed. The smaller the space the more cleaning it will need. The more OCD you are the more cleaning it will need lol! I don't have poop boards in my coops either so I rake up and remove poop from under the roosts every morning and at the same time I also rake up the barn floor area where they hang out a lot during the day. They also have access to pasture but they like the barn. I don't completely strip the coop but twice a year. But my birds spend very little time in their coops during the day so it stays fairly clean.

Your coop looks pretty tight as far as ventilation when it's closed up, are there more openings on the other sides?

 

[PhatChicks]

Yep, there is ventilation coming through the other side. Once autumn gets here, I'll be making a few changes to make sure they stay warm but have fresh air during winter.

Thanks for the advice about cleaning the coop and run. I probably can clean out the coop a bit more during the week. I only have 7 birds so there isn't a ton of poop but still, it's better overall for them, I think.

 

[Aronia]

Have fun!