How often do you clean your coop?

[Kellow1]

we have 2 baby chicks we're hand-rearing, and thinking of keeping (rather than giving away to my aunt and uncle in the country). but i'm trying to work out how we'd do this, so i can then convince my dh.

so, if you have a fixed coop, how often do you clean it? how do you go about cleaning it?

oh, and does anyone lay hay down on the ground for the chooks to scratch around in?

thanks so much in advance

edited to say: i should add that we plan on having no more than 3 chooks

Don't use hay because it molds and is unhealthy for chickens. I use sand as the litter in my coop and I clean it out about once a week using a kitty litter scoop. I have 16 chicks!

 

[kbroom]

When it needs it

I dunno, I mean, what do you mean "clean". I scrape the poo off the droppings board under the roost every morning (elapsed time: 20 seconds) which removes about half the daily poo output from the coop right then and there. Once or twice a year when the birds are molting and I get a lot of feathers piling up, I rake the worst of 'em up along with any pooier spots of bedding and take that out to the compost pile. If I get a wet spot int he litter, like from spilling the waterer, I'll do a scoop or two with the shovel to remove that. Otherwise I pretty much just add litter to what's already there. It is not very time-consuming at all.

With only 3 chickens, as long as you build them a LARGE (for them) coop and LARGE WELL-DRAINED run, sanitation should not be a very big issue. Especially if you use a droppings board which I highly recommend.

I put weeds and garden weedings/trimmings (leaving out anything real toxic) into the run for them to scratch around in. Some people do use hay. Mind they have grit available if you're going to do that, and even with grit available some people have had birds get impacted crops from hay (although many have not; who knows exactly what makes the difference).

Keep the chickens, they're FUN

Good luck and have fun,

Pat

Yep. That's pretty much what I do. I scrape the poop off the top every morning, as I refill the smaller drinking dispensers and food retainers inside my inner coop, then in my outer pin, I have a large water bucket, and an outside food container. So, those three things I do every morning: "clean straw/hay scrape," change water and fill food containers. I do this because they're cooped up at night to protect them from predators, or if it's raining or cold outside. Because it's getting cold now, even here in south Texas, I had to put cardboard up, all over there screen walls. In the Summertime, their inner coop is air open, with fans in either direction, because of the heat, even at night. Otherwise, in the daytime, they're free range, unless they want to take protection from the weather.