How stinky are chickens?

[rebecca10782]

I was just asking my mom why people think chickens are such dirty animals. I love to cuddle my chickens because they smell so good. I suppose a chicken would smell if it were unhealthy or covered in poop. As long as you keep the coupe clean and the chicken healthy, they don't smell. We use a lot of pine in the coupe, it might be the pine smell that add to the freshness of our chickens

And no, there is no way you can inhale chicken feathers. Every animal (and human for that matter) that is not properly groomed can have lots of dander that can flare up allergies. And chickens groom themselves

 

[SportTees]

Small flocks have no noticeable odor-

 

[HorseFeathers]

Normal birds are not smelly at all if you keep them clean!

Meat birds, however, (Cornish Xs) do have a peculiar odor...

 

[HorseFeathers]

Our birds actually smell like flowers and linen detergent, for some reason!

 

[SportTees]

Quote:
What do you feed them to make them smell so good

 

[brandywine]

I use deep litter in my coop, which is an 8x10 stall in the barn, dirt-floored, well-drained. Fifteen pullets and one roo. The chooks went into it in August. It has never been cleaned out, and may not be until fall, if it needs it. I use very fine shavings, horse bedding.

When the girls are locked in for days on end -- when we are all snow and ice, and they won't go outside anyway -- it will accumulate a moderately offensive ammonia smell. A lot of that seems to come from an accumulation on the deep concrete-block windowsill where some of them like to roost; I use a hoe to rake that out every time I turn litter. Two days of free-ranging during daylight and the coop is odorless again. I turn the litter every day when the birds are locked up, every second or third day when they are free-ranging. The guano just disappears. Becomes one with the deep, dry shavings. Like an undergravel filter in a fish tank, but dry.

I dunno about odors for birds confined to permanent runs. Seems likely. I have a small run off the pop-door, but it has been open since September. I keep it thickly bedded with mulch hay to keep down mud.