How bad was it to muck? Ah, it wasn't fun, it probably took less than 2 hours total though I took quite a few breaks because my back protested, that sturff is heavy! And when I dug into it sometimes the ammonia smell was a little overpowering.
Now the coop before then didn't smell, I figure the reason it smelled when I dug into it was because last fall I still had over 50 birds in a 6 by 8 coop, way more than it should support. (This was due to an insane number of guineas when some losses were "over-replaced" by the hatchery.
) That's more poop than would normally accumulate over the winter.
My DLM is a base of sand on top of hardware cloth so nothing can dig in from outside, followed by dried leaves and then I added straw every week to freshen things up. Used to drop a foot into the coop from the door and over the last 6 months the added straw and poop made it pretty level with the door sill.
I scooped out the straw/poop/leaves mixture with a spade fork and a long handled claw and threw it into a pile outside the door. It's not getting rained on.
After a few weeks outside I hope to till some of it into my veggie garden. Since there was still an ammonia smell I am sure it's still too strong for the garden right now. Not that I've planted anything yet, still a lot of snow out here (and more coming this weekend, WAAAAAAH!)
I hope I've answered everyone's questions. Oh yeah, I added fresh straw after I was done.
