How to keep chickens out of barn short of physically blocking it off?

[enola]

If you can get the hay deep enough, they will cover up the old hole they dug when they move to another place to scratch......

 

[chickengeorgeto]

We have goats and naturally they have a barn to sleep in. Normally, we just put in fresh straw whenever it starts getting too dirty and poopy, so it's usually pretty clean and doesn't smell terrible. We intended for our chickens to be free range, but they love going into the barn. The problem isn't necessarily them being in the barn, but the fact that they love to dig around in the straw which means digging up all the poop and dirty straw underneath the fresh. I'd really like for them to be able to free range, but we don't want them to keep dirtying up the barn.

How can you keep chickens out of a particular place? We can't put up a physical barrier because the goats still need to be able to come and go as they please, but right now we can only let the chickens out in the evenings when we're there to supervise and chase them out of the barn. Is there another way to discourage them from going into it?

There are two options, erect a physical barrier, or burn the barn down.

PS: Be glad that you don't have cows. A mother hen will squire her clutch around all day in anticipation of a cow pooping and the mother hen and her babies wading hip deep into this bonanza. This is what real free range is.