Official BYC Poll: How Often Do You Clean Your Coop?

[dogpatchchickens]

I clean my 4 coops early each morning. What makes easy cleaning is sand. Simply scoop the poop and put it in a bucket and dispose of it. Done.
Other than building coops to withstand strong storms including cat 1 hurricanes, ease of cleaning coops was a priority. It takes me about 30 minutes to clean out coops each morning.

I use the poop tray and sand method. Cleaning is definitely fast and easy

 

[Melinda48]

I clean out the coop once a year. Whether it needs it or not!
The poop boards are cleaned every morning. The floor of my coop gets very little poop in the bedding as the birds go out to the run as soon as they come off the roost and wait there for me to release them.
When winter really bears down, they will spend more time hunkered down in the bedding of the coop.View attachment 2583454
I'll be doing a cleaning next month. It'll get hit with a spray down of Elector PSP when I've emptied it and before I bed it down.

My husband had two galvanized metal pans fabricated. each has nylon rope handles on each end. We keep them under the girl’s roosts. makes cleaning the coop so easy. Pull out the pans, dump in compost pile, clean them, put them back under the roosts. The rest of the coop stays much cleaner that way as the girls use the house for sleeping (and pooping) and laying eggs in their boxes.

 

[Xaphus]

I once tried to clean the coop when one of the girls wanted to lay. She somehow worked the door open and then was surprised that all the nesting boxes were empty. She decided she could wait the 5 min and came back to lay.

 

[L0rraine]

Well I thought I’d been doing the deep litter method and just completely cleaning things out twice a year - but you all have inspired me to do a little more .

I have good ventilation and pretty clean eggs with pine shavings in their laying boxes, which I do clean poop out of whenever I see it. But guess it would be good to figure out the best way to more regularly attack the roosting area.

We have horses, sheep, ducks, bunnies, dogs cat and occasional grandkids in addition to the chickens, so a ‘half our daily cleaning’, as one person mentioned, would be an unimaginable luxury .

 

[Ecalix]

My coop floor bedding only needs changing 2x per year. I use a "poop hammock" under the roosts, so I just have to pull that out and hose it off once a week. There's virtually no poop on the coop floor because of that. Feed and water are in the run, so no spills.

I like this poop hammock! Where can I get this? We are currently researching to design our coop

 

[MetroMutt]

Every couple days or so! I have 4 girls and the nesting area isnt huge so poop builds up fast, because of that I clean it whenever it needs to be cleaned and pick up chicken poop around the yard for my compost bucket

 

[Ryguy3684]

I like this poop hammock! Where can I get this? We are currently researching to design our coop

Here's some close up pics if how I attach it to the coop wall and the bottom roost bar. I had one on my old roost which was like stair steps. It worked the same way, but it had grommets at each roost bar going down. It's a heavy duty tarp that I put grommets in. They attach to the eye screws with caribiners. You should be able to get everything at Home Depot for under $50.
I love it. It makes weekly cleaning so much easier. Good luck with your setup. PM me if you need any more advise on it. I've made a couple of them.

 

[Ecalix]

Thank you! This is so helpful

 

[Beer can]

8'x16' coop deep litter stays dry and stink free. Clean it out in the spring when I need fertilizer for the garden

 

[VirginiaFarmerGirl]

I like cleaning my coop.....

We do it every four months so seasonal. We do a deep bedding (8-12 bags of pine shavings for our local TS) in fall and winter and it gets flipped once a week. Then in spring and summer we do a light bedding (2-4 bags) and it gets turned every other week. As far as deep clean like washing the walls and floor I do it 1-2 times a year. I am deep cleaning today actually