Is there a difference

[Person1234]

Do different kinds of foods make chickens poop smell worse? My friend has a chicken coop and the only thing they feed them is cracked corn he says he feeds them that because their poop doesn't smell as bad. I feed my flock laying feed and sometimes their poop does come out very stinky. Is he right about what he says or does it not make a difference?

 

[Ol Grey Mare]

Do different kinds of foods make chickens poop smell worse? My friend has a chicken coop and the only thing they feed them is cracked corn he says he feeds them that because their poop doesn't smell as bad. I feed my flock laying feed and sometimes their poop does come out very stinky. Is he right about what he says or does it not make a difference?

Yes - different diets will effect the smell of waste. The concern here would be that the diet your friend is giving his birds is woefully lacking as far as meeting the nutritional needs of poultry - so I would not recommend following his lead on that count. I know many folks who feed fermented feed (commonly shorthanded as FF on BYC) note reduced objectionable odor in the birds' waste - so you could switch to a FF program using a more appropriate and balanced feed, have healthy birds and less odor.
All that being said - are you familiar with cecal poop? You mentioned their poop is "sometimes very stinky", and the first place my mind goes when I see someone mention occasional horrible odor (or consistency, color,etc) is cecal poop.

 

[Person1234]

Yes I do think my hens have that sometimes I read about it before and it said that is was normal, but is their any way of preventing it?

 

[chickengeorgeto]

Regardless of what you feed or how you treat your feed before you feed it, the thing that makes chicken poop smell bad is excess Nitrogen also known as "Protein"

Excess Nitrogen self converts into Ammonia. This is the reason that the smell of Broiler-Fryer rearing houses make your eyes water on a humid Summers day.

As an old chicken farmer I think that the Ammonia smell coming from a broiler house is like French perfume. Since not one chicken in 1,000,000
totally free ranges, and besides it takes on average approximately 25 acres of natural open land for a small flock of chickens to find all the groceries it needs, please make sure that your birds have a balanced diet. Anyway, a 16% to 18% protein diet will not result in a strong Ammonia order.

 

[Person1234]

Ok thanks

 

[pdirt]

The cecal poops happen I think every 90 minutes or so, I don't recall the exact timing. And they STINK! BAD! No way getting around it. Regular poops do not smell as bad.

I have done the fermented feed and didn't really notice much difference in smell, though I know lots of others have. Maybe my particular local flora (that makes the fermented feed) isn't prone to reducing odors. I do still feed some fermented feed, but it isn't their sole food source.

Some folks go to great lengths to reduce poop smells, things like:

* poop boards (under the roosts, cleaned daily or weekly)
* poop trays filled with sand (under roosts, poops scooped regularly)
* using Sweet PDZ under roosts and/or in the rest of the coop and run (bedding material mixed with a mineral that absorbs odors)
* completely cleaning out the coop every day or week or month


I don't bother with those things. We do have some smell, but it's never all that bad. Probably because it is so dry here that the poops dry out quickly. About once a month I do spray the interior of the coop and run down with a probiotic brew I make. The microbes in the brew help cut down smells. In fact, for a few days after the spray-down, I can't smell anything much at all. I'd do it more often, but I am lazy and once a month is enough for me (since the smell isn't bad to begin with). We also live out in the country where we don't have close neighbors that might not be as tolerant of the mild smell as we are.

 

[Person1234]

Ok thanks for the info