alyzandra
In the Brooder
Okay, I have a real issue here. There is a terrible smell coming from my chicken coop! I want to say it could possibly be an ammonia smell, but it also smells sort of off. Sour almost? Sour ammonia? It's terrible. Here's the whole run-down:
To start, we are novice chicken owners. This is our first set of hens, we have four rhode island reds. We purchased the coop at Tractor Supply, then hubby built the run and constructed the coop to it. We don't do the deep litter method, I clean their droppings out once or twice a day and add fresh bedding as needed, then clean the whole coop out once a week. I use coop and clean powder on the floor of the coop when it's the weekly cleaning time, then add the pine shavings, and even sprinkle chicken-friendly dried herbs on top of the bedding every now and again.
The bottom of the coop, as well as the run is a mixture of dirt, sand, and pea gravel. That is also cleaned up of droppings regularly and I also rake it around pretty regularly.
We have a 4 gallon water bucket with drinking nipples, and hubby constructed a PVC type feeder where the girls can eat from either their run or under the coop.
I can't for the life of me figure out where or why or what this atrocious smell is! It's making me crazy, and I also don't want to upset my neighbors being that we live in town. I have no idea what it is, how to remedy it, or really even where it's coming from.
I am a nurse and am very familiar with the ammonia smell that can come from urine, but this is slightly different. It's very strong and honestly pretty assaulting to smell. Please help me! I'm just at a loss and not sure how much more I could clean this dang thing. No amount of scrubbing seems to suffice either.
Any input is greatly appreciated!