How clean is your coop? Answers needed to help me clean!

[taprock]

My coop is a disaster right now and I am looking for some cleaning tips. Here are some questions for you.

When you do spring cleaning from top to bottom what do you do - specific- and what products do you use? How often do you do a top to bottom cleaning?

What do you do for regular maintenance cleaning - daily or weekly?

Maybe add what materials you are working with and what size coop. Example my floor is cement and walls are just cedar boards and my coop is 10' x 12'.

Thanks for any responses and happy coop cleaning!

 

[fried green eggs]

Power washer for cement floors works great and then followed by shop vac to suck up all the water - to help it dry fast. I have a sunroom off our garage that is 15x20 that is cement floors and cedar walls we use it as a welping/puppy pen when we have a litter. Daily cleaned and when pups are crate trained - I use Simple Green mixed with warm water. I pour a bucket on the floor, use push broom to scrub area and then power wash and shop vac up. If you ware rubber boots you won't need a shower right away when done. My new chicken coops are 8x8 and 4x8 are lined floor to ceiling so they can also be power washed

It's Not a fun job but, it looks and smells great when done

lined poop board under roost is cleaned and washed down weekly and shavings in coop is changed when it starts to smell

Right now I have 6 new chicks in a brooder in our sunroom.

 

[SunnyCalifornia]

Great questions! I know some people are very meticulous... I don't have that kind of free time, so I do my best.

I have 5 coops...

3 of them are for bantam pairs, 1 of them is a grow out coop, and the last houses 6 LF hens. I'm in the process of moving everyone around, trying desperately to simplify....

Coops 1, 2, 3..... easy peasy... little birds aren't that messy, especially when you only have 2 in each coop. Those coops are 4x4x6 (tall) with a snuggle/ nest box and a roost. I clean up obvious poops on the exposed surfaces daily with a paper towel, when I go out to give them treats, and clean/fill their food and water. The bottom of the coop is solid wood, I put some diatomaceous earth (DE) down then some shavings, and I expect to clean it out maybe 1-2x per month, depending on how soiled it gets. I HATE flies, and I'll do what I have to, to keep them away. I use a scraper, and a broom to clean the surfaces.

Coop 4- grow out coop, is 5x5x5,divided into upstairs and downstairs. It needs to be modified. Its too hard to clean. I used it for my LF, but they need a bigger coop now. My plan is to power wash it, let it dry, and put the DE down on the bottom, shavings on top, and then under the roost, which is upstairs, make a poop board that can slide out to clean easily.

Coop 5- LF hen coop/run. This is my newest, and not quite completed yet. It has a concrete tile floor. I might try sand in the bottom, as I haven't tried that medium before, and the shavings are messy in the yard. I'm also contemplating using sod in sections, but the coop that I just built has a roost, with a wire bottom below, that I will be able to put a sliding poop board underneath, lined with newspaper, for a quick, easy clean up every day or two.

Chickens have taken over my life...... but they're so darn cute!!

 

[Carols Clucks]

I designed ours so I could open one door and push everything out the other with a big squeegee tool I found in the garage. The vinyl and shavings seem to work pretty good for my method. A hoe works good should some one have missed and hit a roost. And the nest boxes are kitty litter or dish pans and the cubby they fit in has a layer of shavings too.

They free range all day, so it is just the night time mess we have to deal with.

 

[elmo]

My own preference is to spent a short amount of time cleaning up daily, rather than have to face a big cleaning once or twice a year. For that reason, I use sand in the coop rather than the deep litter method. I clean out poop trays use a reptile litter scoop to tidy up the rest of the coop daily. It takes about ten minutes. I also poop scoop the run daily.

 

[TreeHugger]

I've got an 8' by 10' coop; wooden floor and walls. I use pine shavings and clean out the coop about once a month to change the shavings. Twice a year (spring & fall) I do a complete clean by spraying down the floors and walls. I use lysol quaternary cleaner, a water hose and a scrub brush to do a total clean.

My coop right now is an embarrassment and I should have already done my spring cleaning. However, I'm working on another coop that should be completed in the next few weeks. I've decided to hold off cleaning until the second coop is completed and part of my birds are moved over.

 

[patandchickens]

Quote:
I remove dusty cobwebs from ceiling corners with a really old nasty mop that was here when we moved in.

I remove most of the year-old bedding from the pens (parts that are still in good shape I leave there) and replace with fresh shavings.

If the droppings board or roost have gotten a bit cruddier than daily cleaning takes care of, I might flop a damp cloth on the area for an hour or two and then re-scrape (or just wipe with damp cloth itself after letting it soak there, depending on the surface)

That's pretty much it.

You don't need "products"

How often do you do a top to bottom cleaning?

I sweep the aisle and do cobwebs whenever it seems to need it (well, actually it's usually more like a week or two AFTER it seems to need it LOL)... I'm going to guesstimate it's maybe every 2 months? And a couple times a year I will remove the worst areas of bedding, such as right around the feeder where feed-dust tends to accumulate, or a few places where droppings predictably fall off the board, and top up with fresh bedding. Or sometimes just add fresh bedding to what's already in there, depends on how things are.

What do you do for regular maintenance cleaning - daily or weekly?

Every morning I use a big drywall-taping tool to "snowplow" the poo off the droppings boards into a bucket held in the other hand, takes literally less than 10 seconds per pen. Except for the one pen that still has no droppings boards, that one I remove the pile o' poo that develops under the roost every week or 10 days or so.

Total elapsed cleaning time (i.e. not including feeder/waterer related duties, or putting chickens in/out or collecting eggs or anything non cleaning related) is approx 2 minutes per day plus maybe 30 min several times a year.

Note that the reason it's so low-maintenance for me is largely that I have very few chickens for the amount of space -- in the chicken pens it's 15 sq ft apiece or close to it, the turkeys are more-(and sadly too-)crowded at about 5 sq ft apiece plus run BUT the turkeys spend *all* their time outdoors anyhow except when sleeping and I really AM workin' on building them larger quarters in the horse barn.

If I did this "4 sq ft per hen plus 10 sq ft apiece of run" business, you can bet I'd be spending waaaay more time cleaning, and my style of deep litter management would not work the way it does now.

Maybe add what materials you are working with and what size coop. Example my floor is cement and walls are just cedar boards and my coop is 10' x 12'

Building is 15x40 but a lot is aisle and storage area; the total floor area of chicken/turkey pens is only (does lots of mental math...) (gives up and uses calculator...) 326 sq ft. Some pen floors are vinyl, some painted OSB, some heavily-bedded concrete.

Animal-behavior considerations aside, I just have too many other demands on my time to keep chickens at a density that requires large amounts of work to maintain

JME, good luck, have fun,

Pat​

 

[kuntrygirl]

Quote:
I spring clean from top to bottom EVERY month.

I use bleach and water and a lot of towels and scrubbers.

For regular maintenace, I clean roosts and shovel up poop when they have what I think is too much poop. I check all of these areas every day and clean or pick up as needed.

Below are pics of some of the areas that I have to clean. There are other areas but I don't have those pics on my computer. I have a total of 1 large chicken house with 20 nesting boxes, 1 small chicken house with 2 nesting boxes, 4 chicken stalls/breeding pens where they roost at night and hang out during the morning, 2 medium size open air/raised coops, 12 raised/ partially open air brooders. I think I"m forgetting something here but anyway.

Chicken House connected to 1 of my Open Raised/Open Air Coops:
I have to go in and pick up any hay that they have kicked out of the nesting boxes. I remove all old hay, clean nesting boxes, sprinkle Sevin Dust in all nesting boxes and put in new hay. I scoop up any poop that they leave behind. This area has a dirt floor. There is a total of 20 nesting boxes in this particular area.

In this area, I keep hay on the wire floor to catch the poop when they roost at night and throughout the day. Once the hay is removed, I pick up any loose poop and clean the wire floor with bleach and water. I then have to spray AND scrub the back wall to remove any poop stains that may be on the wall.

Coop after bedding is removed:

Open/Air coop with hay bedding to catch poop.

Size of Chicken Stalls/Roosts: 30 feet long x 6 feet deep (from front to back). In this area, I have to go in and clean the poop from the roosts if any poop is on there. This is 30 feet of dirt floors. I only have to scoop their poop.

Pic of how the walls inside of the chicken stalls look when it's time to clean them. I go in and spray with bleach and water and scrub down.

Nesting Boxes also have to be cleaned - remove old bedding, put in new bedding and sprinkle Sevin Dust:

I have about 6 portable nesting boxes that have to be cleaned the same way as the other nesting boxes.

I have about 12 brooders that have to be cleaned when occupied. Here is a pic of one of them.

Peacock Aviary has to be cleaned as well. I go in to scoop poop and tidy up their aviary. The measurements are 28 feet long - 10 feet wide - 8 feet tall.

I then have to soak and clean about 75 waterers and feeders in a mixture of bleach and water. They soak for about an hour and then I fill them back up and place them where they should go.

All of this takes about 8+ hours. I usually do this on a Saturday morning. I get started about 7AM and I don't stop until it's all done.

In addition, I still have other animals (rabbits, goat and sheep) and I have to clean their area as well.

After this weekend's cleaning, I have decided that I will invest in a pressure washer to clean the walls. It's too much bending over and over and over and my back is feeling it. The pressure washer will save on time and pain to my body. Hopefully, I can cut my 8 hour cleaning to only 4 hours.

Happy Coop Cleaning to you too!

 

[chicmom]

Hello! I probably clean out my coop entirely about once every two months. And what I do then is use a broom to knock all the cobwebs off, and then rake out all of the wood shavings, then use a broom to sweep it all out completely. I clean out and replace the nesting box materials, and I scrape off the roosts, then I use a block that has sandpaper on it to sand them down completely so there's no dried poop on them. I really don't put any chemicals on it or spray it down with any water.

I try, daily to get out there, use my kitty litter scoop to pick up the poop, and then I use a rake and fluff up the bedding. It seems to look really nice after I do that.

Sometimes I do sprinkle around some Seven dust, but not real often.

And I rake out the chicken runs almost every day, and dispose of the poop from there as well.

If I do the daily spot cleaning, the coop stays pretty nice. It's quick and easy and I think the chickens appreciate it. Plus, you don't have alot of flies (really hardly any), if you rake your run and scoop the poop.

Hope this helps!

Sharon