How to clean poop inside of an all grass walk in chicken run?

[Akachicklil]

Dear Chicken Army Corp ,

I have decent size walk in chicken run with a coop inside of it. The run is grass. I have a bantam. I want to know how to clean the poop. I was watering the poop into the soil as a way to clean it. However I was advised by a fellow member of BYC that I was basically doing a big NO NO. I didn’t realize that hosing chicken poop into the grass was bad!? I would always make sure that it would break up and dissolved into the soil.

How do you clean book on grass? The chickens do not poop in a designated area like some of y’all with your lovely human house sized coops… Do I have to kill my grass by replacing it with sand instead? I was hoping to keep the grass.
Check out my pictures before for reference.

Thank you and Cheers!

 

[rosemarythyme]

Has hosing it down been giving you any issues with odor or anything? If not, I don't see a real reason you should change the routine. That's usually the main complaint, that it eventually becomes smelly from saturating the ground.

A "dry" method would be just getting a dog pooper scooper and just scooping the area regularly. Chicken poop is great for composting or can be tossed if that's not desired.

 

[1chip2chicks3cheeks]

A little late to this thread but thought I might share my thoughts

I find that with a larger run, the poop doesn’t really seem to pile up. With the chickens having a larger area to explore, and scratching all the time, the poop just gets broken up and buried with the help of the chickens. And with dry dirt in the run, the poop is dried out easily. I actually hardly ever notice poop in the chickens run, but there is ALWAYS poop in the coops with our set up. I think that since you still have grass, the poop isn’t easily dried out by the dirt and scratched in by the chicken! So scooping or watering it in would be your best bet until the grass is destroyed. But, thinking back when our run still had grass, I still never noticed any piling up of the poop and I think that is mainly due to having a very big area for the run, so everything is more spread out and isn’t as much of a problem as the chickens scratch it and it decomposes.

 

[BDutch]

No it has not. My grass doesn’t smell. It has to be watered anyways. Plus what I do is try to just really saturate the poop to the ground. I thought that watering the poop would be better for the grass since fresh chicken poop can kill the grass or cause grass burn… but by diluting it I figured the benefits of the nitrogen would go down to the roots. I am trying to work around my current situation of finding solutions l. Great ideas!!

My experience is that there no problem with poop on the grass. I don’t rake it, break, scoop it or hose it. I have 7 bantams on approx 400 m2 grass for approx 3 hours a day. They have more/other places they come. And are in a run most of the time.

As long as the grass is growing its just fine and nutritious for new grass to grow. But because of scratching some grass will disappear.

There is another problem however. Chickens are not solitary animals. They need company. You could /should buy her at least one lady friend to keep heep her company (not a chick),

 

[Lilac_Ginger_Butterscotch]

Most chickens eat and dig up the grass so it may not be able to stay and if you don’t want to put sand down you can put hay or wood chips and with wood chips you can add a little more if it gets a little dirty and with sand you can use a scoop similar to a cat litter scoop and pick up the poop and add them to your compost pile but sadly your grass may not be able to stay

 

[Akachicklil]

Yes she is the only chicken, she was a rescue. I read another thread the OP did

Yes she is. But I am getting another one soon!

 

[mowin]

Use a leaf rake to break it up before hosing it down. If there's a lot of poop rake it into a pile and remove.

How large of a area and how many chicken's? Like mentioned, most runs become void of grass/vegetation.

 

[3KillerBs]

The chickens will almost certainly eat the grass in fairly short order -- unless you have a HUGE space per chicken.

You can let them enjoy the destruction period and then use the bedding of your choice. I'm a big fan of Deep Bedding/Deep Litter myself and never scoop poop.

 

[IdyllwildAcres]

I'm a big fan of Deep Bedding/Deep Litter myself and never scoop poop

If I had to scoop poop, or clean the coop more than once a yearish I would have to reconsider this whole thing!

 

[Akachicklil]

Has hosing it down been giving you any issues with odor or anything? If not, I don't see a real reason you should change the routine. That's usually the main complaint, that it eventually becomes smelly from saturating the ground.

A "dry" method would be just getting a dog pooper scooper and just scooping the area regularly. Chicken poop is great for composting or can be tossed if that's not desired.

No it has not. My grass doesn’t smell. It has to be watered anyways. Plus what I do is try to just really saturate the poop to the ground. I thought that watering the poop would be better for the grass since fresh chicken poop can kill the grass or cause grass burn… but by diluting it I figured the benefits of the nitrogen would go down to the roots. I am trying to work around my current situation of finding solutions l. Great ideas!!