How do you clean the chicken house?

[lil_chick_chick]

Finally! Its DONE!

My husband finished the chicken house just last night and its pretty big, the chickens spent their first night in it last night, no problems at all! But when i went in this morning to check on them, feed them and let them out, there was bunches of poo on the floor of the chicken house. The floor in the house is the ground itself, so do i just use a rake then? We havent got no straw for them yet for the floor part, so they have grass to lay on for now, plus some boards and stuff for them to fly up on. So whats the best way to clean their chicken house? Do i need to clean it everyday?

 

[Colored Egg Farmer]

if you can sweep it up you can even do that. Since it doesn't look like you have bedding best would be to clean every 1-2 days so the chickens stay clean and there eggs will also. Also will help on the disease problems.

 

[SilverStar]

I would get some straw when you can. I clean my coop once a week. I have a brush/scrapper thingy and i scrape all the poo of of the stairs of their coop and where ever els it ends up. Once i have finished scrapping everything off to the floor, i get a pitch fork and a rake and put all the old straw and poo in a wheelbarrell. Then I haul my wheelbarrel over to the compost pile and dump it. then i get new straw and put it in the coop. You really can go for a few weeks before you need to clean the coop but i do it once a week. It also depends on how many chickens you have in the coop. I have 23 currently in 1 coop so there is more poop.Just think of it this way; The more you clean it, the less poop and mess you have to deal with..

 

[TipsyDog]

I wouldn't do straw. I like hay alot better or deep wood shavings. You could put a board under their roost and catch alot of what falls all night and just scrape the board off. Isn't it FUN though??

 

[lil_chick_chick]

Thank you, right now we have 19 in there, we'll probaly get some hay this weekend for them, they seemed to really enjoy it in there, alot more space than what they were sleeping in before the chicken house was done. I let them out into the yard all day since were out in the country, and put them up at sun set, so their not in there all day messing all over, just at night. Im not sure whats the best for their bedding, but the shavings may get costly. It is fun though. Sad thing though, 2 nights ago we had a coon kill 21 chickens when they were sleeping in another pin that apparently wasnt safe enough, so 21 killed and 6 survived

and the next day my husband brought 13 more chickens home that he got from someone, so now were back up to 19.

 

[SilverStar]

Quote:
Oh.. So sorry to hear about your chickens. Thats just awful.

I would purchase wheat straw or rice straw if you can get it, but any straw will do. Our ranch we buy from is currently out of rice straw so we have just been using what they have and it's perfectly fine. Shavings are a little more costly than straw especially if you have to cover alot of ground. Good luck with your chickens, hope this batch is safe, happy, and healthy!