no tomatoes thrown, but...

[lovethepeep]

are chickens really as dirty as people warn me about?

we are hoping to get into this chicken thing soon, but I have had two people squinch thier noses at the news of us buying chickens...and these are farm people!

Is there a way to keep thier area looking/smelling nice? Or should I just get over it already

.

 

[IloveTravis]

My chickens are clean

They smell like freshly plucked roses, lol. Besides a little poop on thier feet, chickens, if well cared for, can be very clean in my opinion.

 

[SterlingAcres]

Like any other pet, when you take care of them correctly, they're fine.

 

[A Carolina Chick]

Chickens are pretty clean. Ducks, however, well let's not go there.

 

[arlee453]

If you cram 10,000 of them in a small house either stacked floor to ceiling in cages laying eggs, or crammed in with barely room to move around in a broiler house, you have a big problem with concentrated poop and odor, cannabilism and all the really negative aspects of chickens.

If you have a small backyard flock, housed with ample room for each bird, and a good husbandry program (ie, simple cleanup procedures) then you have no odor and no problems.

I have 40 birds right now out in my run and I swear the only bad smell out there normally is the fly traps I have hung up. One of those fly traps stinks 4x 'louder' than the entire rest of the run!

 

[Nuggetsowner:)]

My chickens are clean and their coops do not smell. I clean them out regularly in the spring, summer, fall and use the deep little method for winter. Ok by spring the coop might not exactly smell like roses but nothing that is aweful!

 

[EllyMae]

I have to agree, the fly traps are horrible. My chickens would have to be sitting in three feet of poop to smell as bad as ONE fly trap! Overall, I like the way my chickens smell, it's not an offensive smell, just that "farm" smell. Yeah, I'm probably crazy, but I also love the smell of horse sweat and leather saddles, lol.

 

[Ladysonja]

lovethepeep -

The same thing was said to me... not only by some friends, but my mum & dad said too...

Like everyone else has said... it is all how you take care of your flock...

I have six (10 wk olds) in dog creates in my computer room as I write this. I have had them since Friday... The thing I noticed was that the feed and pine shavings stunk more that the chicks themselves.

I'm thinking we have at least 2 more weekends and we will be ready to move them outside.

I also found that raking the shavings once a day with a kitty litter scoop helps. My babies like roosting on their water bottle, so I've had to bungie it to the side of the kennel so they don't dump their water while I'm at work...

You will see a lot of posts about different things... keep reading... before you know it...you'll be hooked with a bunch of little fuzzy peeps yourself.

Good Luck... It's a fun hobby.

 

[onthespot]

I have never had the kind bred for meat production, but I have read on here that all they do is eat and lie around and poop a TON. I would imagine that kind will get stinky. The egg laying kind though, especially bantams, very clean if you keep them decently housed and cleaned up after.

 

[lengel]

My turkeys are stinky. They are meat birds though.

The chickens are fine and the guinea fowl are virtually unnoticeable. We rotate their runs regularly and haven't had any problems.