How often do you clean your coop?

[thebanthams]

I clean the poop off their sleeping roost every weekend. I rake them up and put them in my garden.

 

[Hummingbird Hollow]

I have a poop "slide" that goes under the roosts and about 90% of the poop generated during a night slides down the slide into a bin at the bottom. I try to dump the bin into the compost pile weekly. Every day when I collect eggs I scoop any poop out of the nestboxes and dump it into the bin, adding additional shavings if necessary. I also scoop up any large globs that I notice in the shavings on the floor and put them in the bin so the floor keeps pretty clean. So far I've done a full cleanout of bedding in the spring and late fall, emptying out all the bedding and washing the interior surfaces. Because it is very dry in Colorado, droppings are mostly dry and have very little odor. It may be necessary to clean more often if you live in a more warm or humid environment.

 

[besjoux]

I do the deep litter method. Right now I have about 4 - 5 inches of bedding depending on the area. There is no smell at all. I clean once a week by scooping out the poop under the roosts and grabbing any bigger poops in the coop. Then I turn everything. It still looks very clean! At least once a month I apply stall dry everywhere, concentrating under the roosts.

 

[WestVermont]

Those of you who use deep liter method... what do you use for liter? Sand? Shavings? or something else?

 

[gryeyes]

Pine shavings for me, in a 17 X 20 foot coop with a dirt floor (under several inches of shavings). Once year clean out in the Spring some time, with some not very frequent poop scooping where it accumulates on a stupid horizontal board built as part of the back wall of this former garage. (That, like Ridgerunner's poop board scrapings, goes directly into my composter.) Otherwise, I just keep adding shavings every couple of months, I buy a bale or two, open 'em and remove the plastic then let the chickens stir the piles o' shavings out flat. I usually open a bale under each large ladder roost where the most night droppings accumulate. Chickens spread it for me.

 

[aggiemae]

My coop is 7x5 and the run is 7x12. It has two nest boxes, a big clean out door and five square feet of vents under the eves and three 2x2 windows that are opened all summer. We have five chickens but plan on getting two more after the chicken inspector comes.

We do a major top to bottom steam cleaning in spring when we change out the winter bedding for easy to clean sand.

To keep down the flies I clean mine ever day in the summer but I have an inch or so of sand on the floor so I can scoop it out with a cat litter scoop in about a minute. I have a compost bin going right next to the clean out door to drop the poop right into. I turn it twice during the summer and empty it into my asparagus bed in the fall when I start a new one for the next fall.

In the winter I add to 6" of pine bedding over the sand because the sand is very cold and the bedding really warms to coop up (about 8 degrees!) No matter how bad the weather gets our hens don't go into the coop during the day at all except to lay. The jump off the roosts and go right outside every morning which means they don't scratch the poops under so have to get in there and clean it a few time a week which takes about 5 to 10 minutes but it does give me a chance to check to make sure that the poops look OK. The bedding does get wasted faster that the volcanic sand we use the other three seasons which has almost no waste, but it decomposes quickly and add plenty of 'brown' material to the compost bin.

We have a covered run for the rainy season. It's located on the worst soil in our yard. We are keeping piles of (more or less) dry leaves, and hide shreaded paper and what ever fluffy stuff I can find hidden under hay on the run floor all winter and plan rake this out (almost) composted in the spring. We didn't use the run at all last summer but I am trying to figure out what to do to keep the soil healthy so it doesn't get compacted and die again during the dry season.

 

[Heckel's Hens]

In the beginning, I scooped the poop under the roost every day and added it to compost. Eventually I developed a more relaxed routine. My coop floor is dirt over wire mesh and is located on the highest part of our yard with very good drainage. As long as I keep plenty of pine shavings and hay on the coop floor, I only muck it out every 2-3 months. I add new pine shavings to the roost areas weekly when I scoop and compost. In the summer,I add DE to everything to help with flies, and I use wood ash in the winter. The coop only smells if I have been ill and hubby/kids have just gotten the eggs, etc....no cleaning.

 

[joan1708]

I have 3 silkies in a 3x2ft coop and ~15 x 3 ft run. I use wood shavings for litter in the coop. I scoop under the roost every morning and flip it into a compost pile 2 feet away. I've had my chickens for 9 months. I've take some of the run bedding out from around a feeder that the chickens were billing out the feed and attracting ants. I've added bedding to the run from time to time(I use leaves and other non toxic yard waste). I throw some PDZ in there every 2-4 wks. I haven't "cleaned" my coop or run yet. I don't have any fly, rodent or smell issues. My hens seem healthy.

 

[JanetS]

I have 5 chickens( just lost one to a bobcat) in a 3 x 6 coop. I have sand in the coop that gets cleaned out daily. I did use pine shaving but find that sand works better
for us.

 

[The Lazy L]

I'm bad.

Coop is used only for roosting and laying. The run they have access to 24 x 7. I haven't cleaned the coop since October, just throw some pine shavings in once in a while to cover any bare spots. Plenty of ventilation with no "what is that stench?" smell problems.