How often do you clean your coop?

[SD Bird Lady]

I cleaned mine out in September 2012... it is 8x12 walk in coop with a wooden floor with 1 duck and 6 large breed chickens. They range most of the time and there is no water in their coop. I just take a pitch fork / manure fork and get the large piles out from under the roost about once a month and then flip everything.I will probably clean it next fall. I don't have a compost area yet so it all goes on the garden and then lays covered by snow until I till it in the next spring.

when I started i thought it would stink but it hasn't gotten stinky yet except once when we had a bad storm and so the coop was on "lock down" for a couple days and I put their water dish in the coop.....**** duck!!

 

[Kaitie09]

I have a poop board that I empty every couple weeks and that goes into the compost bin. Each time, I lay down a layer of DE on both the board and the roost. Pine shavings go over that. I don't think I've clean the floor since last spring, I just add some more shavings to it. The poop board catches 99% of the interior waste, so as long as I keep that clean, nothing smells. I also just add pine shaving to the nesting boxes when needed. I'll do a complete clean out in the spring including scrubbing the walls and floor down.

 

[nikchic]

Being a newbie at this can you please explain to me what a poop board is please. Or even better, if you can post some photos, that would be super helpful to me. I would love to see some pictures of the insides of the coops to see how I can improve mine. Also please tell me what DE is.
What is safe to clean the walls and floors with? What is PDZ?? Sorry for all the questions.

 

[kacklinkelly]

I am also new to backyard chickens. I have found the answers to any questions I have by typing in the topic in the search discussion bar at top of the forum page and it brings you to previous articles including that info.

DE stands for diatomaceous earth. I just bought some at our local feed store. If you use it, make sure it is food grade. I have found so many uses for it per the internet and recommendations from the woman at the feed store.

Poop boards as I understand it, are flat surfaces (of any easy to clean material) that are directly under the roosting poles and catch the droppings of roosting birds. Check out the coop design photos and many will have the poop boards. Some are removable and some are stationary.

I have seen people post about PDZ but don't know what it stands for. My understanding is that it is a barn stall refresher that eliminates odors. Keep researching, everything we need to know is on this forum somewhere. Have fun .

 

[ChickensAreSweet]

I scrape my two shed coops every day (very thin layer of sand at the bottom) with a plastic scraper rake. Then I sift through the sand after it is piled up with a kitty litter scoop.

I toss the poo outside or bury it (so the chickens can't get to it). Then I spread the sand back over the floor and add sand as necessary. I use dry play sand.

 

[Izzymoon]

My chickens have to cross the coop to get to the nesting boxes, if I don't clean it I find the eggs get a little dirty. Not a big deal but rather not wash the eggs if I can avoid it (unil I need to)

 

[Stumpy]

My chickens are out during most of the day. The 8 X 12 coop floor is covered with sand and the area under the roost is Stall Dri. I scoop the poop under the roost every morning and also anything I see in the sand. This has worked well so far, about seven months, and no odor..

 

[Brookliner]

Above is the inside of my large coop. I have a poop tray under my roost (on the right side of picture) and Hi Fiber Gold Horse Forage that I use on the coop floor. I built this coop last fall and moved the flock in the last week of October. I haven't finished my attached run so my 14 Bantams are cooped for the winter. I sift the poop trays with a seive every 1 -2 days (10 minutes max) and fluff up the bedding on the floor. I will probably just add to the floor mix until the fall when I will add it to my compost and start over. I find that by using a combination of DE and PDZ (Stall Fresh-which is a mineral called Zoelite a mineral that attracts ammonia and eliminates it) the poop gets covered with the PDZ and DE mix and when I compost it the flys are not attracted to it. So no fly problem in my coop or compost. I also sprinkle the PDZ/DE mix in my nest boxes and into the floor bedding. No smell in my coop at all. I do have water in the coop see picture below... I have it on a patio paver on a second tray opposite the roost. Between the waterers I sprinkle a small amount of the PDZ/DE mix and their treats. With their regular feed in hanging feeders near the floor and the treats in the shelf it keeps them moving around. The large window (presently covered with plastic for the winter slides open and I plan on leaving it open for the summer. It is covered with1/2" hardware cloth. The roof is 2x6 with 2x4 purlins (nailed crossways to the rafters) then I have corrugated asphalt (Ondura) nailed on as the roof. The overhang on 4 sides is open covered with 1/2" hardware cloth. The coop is a shed style 10 ft on one side and 6ft on the other allowing air flow to suck the warmer humid air out the top. I insulated so coop stays fairly warm and the chickens have no draft. It s working just as I planned it would work so I am very happy with tis design. The coop is 8x8 with a 4x8 storage area. The run will use 2/3 of the space under the coop and have an additional 8x24 ft area at the back all hardware cloth roofed with corrigated polycarbonate roofing.



Picture of the outside of the coop

 

[Izzymoon]

wow, that's an amazing coop, love all the tiers and such. They live in a palace!

 

[Our Roost]

Glad you posted and posed this question! Maintenance upkeep and tips to make chores easier and less time consuming is always a good topic to explore. When it comes to cleaning chicken waste, ( poop ) I find my biggest concentration of it to be underneath their roosting perches. I swear that chickens Poop all night when sleeping on their perches. Every morning I am blessed with a fresh mound of you know what! It runs from one end of their perch to the other, directly underneath and plopped perfectly onto the surface I have set up to catch it. Some people refer to them as drop boards. Basically it is set up to catch the droppings so they dont end up on the coop floor and get tracked all over the place. Some people construct a shelf and some people just use boards wide enough to remove and scrape the droppings from. Either way, it can save a lot of unnecessary work. I have mine a little wider than the width of a dust pan. And yes, I use the dust pan to make a clean sweep from one end to the other under the perches. It all goes into a cheap wash bucket with a handle to carry out and dump on our blueberry bushes. And no, the blueberries dont taste like chicken poop! Tee Hee. But it is great fertilizer when it composts. We clean the poop shelf every other day at minimal. Keep in mind that poop contains a lot of moisture and will freeze solid if not cleaned on a regular basis during the winter months. The excess moisture is not good for the birds respiratory system either during cold weather. Good luck with that. Hope these tips help.