I have 18 2 week old chicks. Its to cold to move them outside so i have no choice but to keep them in the house. I cant stand the stink. I change papers several times a day and i dont know what else to do. I am hoping someone has a suggestion or these are going out to fend for themselves real quick!
I use pine shavings and change them every couple of days. The used pine shavings work great as mulch around plants. And the pine shavings have a very nice odor.
Do you not have a garage or something you could set up a large plywood box in and fill with pine shavings? You can put a heat lamp on them and they would be fine and not in your house. I just built a huge 8 foot long by 2 feet wide brooder box out in my old drafty barn but with the heat lamp, bedding and fairly closed in box with a screened lid, the chicks stay nice and warm and do very well. I should add here that I keep baby chicks inside the house till they are 2 to 3 weeks old before moving them out to the barn.
I used pine shavings in my indoor brooder. I think that helped keep some of the smell down. By the time they reached 2 w.o., I was changing it daily, however, which wasn't cheap. Those Airwick air fresheners and an oil diffuser turned out to be great additions to the living area.
Build a heated coop and move yourself out there Seriously, the pine shavings took care of the oder for me.
I've got 2 week olds that are out in a brooder pen with a heat lamp in one of my coops. Can't you rig something up for a brooder for them out in one of your buildings? As long as they've got a heat lamp and aren't in drafts there's no reason not to move them out. Welcome back by the way....haven't seen you around for awhile!!
Do you have a spare bathroom? I did, and lined the bathtub with plastic, then newspaper, then 3" of pine shavings. I moved the tension-rod from the shower curtain to the center of the tub and hung their light from that, on a chain. I kept that bathroom door closed, and occasionally would run the ceiling fan to clear it out. When I moved them outside, I un-did the tape around the edge of the plastic, lifted the whole thing up and out by the edges of the plastic, and dumped it in the garden. It worked really well, and kept the odor (which was minimal) to one room of the house. I did have to tape one sheet of plastic up about waist high as they got older, to keep them from jumping out of the tub. This hung inside the bathtub a few inches so they couldn't sneak out or perch on the edge of the tub. I either untaped the plastic barrier or reached underneath it to tend to the chicks, food, water, etc. Some food-grade DE or "stall-dry" in the shavings would help even more. Their turds dry up to nearly indistinguishable. Good luck!
Check to see they are not spilling water into the shavings. Mine did that and I thought they smelled horrible, then I found out that the damp bedding made everything smell so much worse. The shavings can look clean and still feel dry on top and be wet underneath. So you have to scrape them away to check. I set the water up above the shavings on a cheap paperback (or two) and they stopped spilling it. I also changed the shavings fairly often like the poster above especially around the food dishes and their favourite sleeping spot, and you couldn't smell them unless you stuck your head right in the bin. If they have just started to smell bad check out coccidosis. Those poo's smell worse I think, and the chicks are in danger.
