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

[Animal Fanatic]

I scoop poop every day and do a full bedding change out and cleaning once a month.

 

[burt4750]

I have poop boards that have sand and PDZ combined that I scoop every day. I use pine horse bedding on the floor and I scoop poop from the top each time I do the poop boards. It is time for me to do my first real deep clean of the coop which was built a year ago and I have a question about doing that. I utilize the pine horse bedding and PDZ as a deep litter method even though I superficially scoop it every day. When I clean the coop, should I shovel out the pine bedding and replace it or just sift it and use it again and just add more of the bedding as well as PDZ (I periodically sprinkle and mix in the PDZ in the pine bedding once a month or so). The roosts get a soap and water cleaning about every 3 months but I am going to have to be more diligent about that.

 

[My Very First 6 Chickens]

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.

I adore your coop

 

[Outta Here]

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.

Yep, Amen and Amen! Sand makes all the difference!
Plus painted surfaces. I go out in my pjs before coffee, rake into dustpan, pour onto screen, dump screen in compost, and wipe down the white painted roosts--all in about 5 minutes. I do it again sometimes before their bedtime. So clean I'd eat my lunch in there!

 

[Outta Here]

Sand and white painted surfaces keep my small sleeping coop super clean in 5 minutes a day.
For 37 years I deep bedded with straw or shavings and mucked out goat pen/ chicken house in the barn every couple weeks. I kept it clean enough to get down and help birth a goat kid or sit in the straw on a blanket to play with them.
But (no offense) deep bedding still is layers of straw and poop that gets turned to the surface by the chickens. It's marvelous smelling when you first clean and spread new straw or shavings, but it's still just a compost pile that builds ammonia and stinks every day. Plus mucking out is a huge, smelly job. I'm getting too old to want to do all that shovel work.
Now I use sand and white painted surfaces in the small sleeping coop I built and am absolutely delighted with how squeaky clean I can have the whole place in 5 minutes every morning. I go out at 4 am barefoot in my pj's before coffee, wake and pet the chickens and wait for them to hop down and go outside, rake the poop into a dustpan, pour the dustpan onto a screen, dump the screen in compost bucket, wipe down the white painted roost, and go have coffee. Takes about 5 minutes. It's so easy and fast, I usually do it again before their bedtime, this time just leaning over the wall to rake into a dog pooper scooper. Takes about 1 minute.
And there is never a huge clean out job. I don't even own muck boots anymore.
I only bed with about a 2" layer and have the rest of my sand in a big pile behind the shop. I add a couple shovelfuls every week and replace the sand every month or so.
(Their outside run is dirt, which I rake about twice month. My free range chickens hang out on my tiled porch, which takes me longer every day to clean than their chicken coop!)
Granted, I only have 15 chickens now and my indoor sleeping coop is small. But if I had a barn full of them again, I'd paint the roost white and use sand...and throw away the muck boots.

If I didn't care about reusing the sand, I would just use the dustpan and skip the screen.
White flecks under nest box are spilled oyster shell. Their water and a 36" feed trough is under there, safe from droppings.
The nest box lid is closed at night to keep them from roosting in it.

p.s. After reading 3KillerBs article on dry deep bedding, I realize my negative experience for decades was with deep litter, which is what happens when you raise chickens with goats peeing gallons! And even though I much prefer sand, deep bedding sounds much, much better than deep litter!

 

[3KillerBs]

But (no offense) deep bedding still is layers of straw and poop that gets turned to the surface by the chickens. It's marvelous smelling when you first clean and spread new straw or shavings, but it's still just a compost pile that builds ammonia and stinks every day. Plus mucking out is a huge, smelly job. I'm getting too old to want to do all that shovel work.

My Deep Bedding is completely odor-free.

It's an absolutely bone-dry system, dry enough that it can't support the growth of pathogens. The amount of litter used dries out the poop almost instantly and the ventilation prevents any possible build up of ammonia or moisture.

There is no odor at cleaning time either -- again because it's perfectly dry. Of course I wear a mask to filter particulates, but we should all wear masks at any time when we're cleaning the coop regardless of our manure management system. The straw and shavings are not heavy either -- because they are dry.

When I wrote my Deep Bedding article I admitted that distaste for the idea of manure accumulating and finding the Big Cleanout chore intimidating were two valid reasons to dislike the system. But on the flip side you get the advantage of not having to handle poop as part of your daily chores and a significant savings of time overall.

Personally, I cannot imagine either cleaning my chicken coop before I've even had a cup of coffee in the morning or cleaning ANY animal facility twice daily.

Fortunately, there are many good systems to accommodate many different personal preferences. I encourage people to try different ones until they come up with what works best in their unique circumstances.

 

[Outta Here]

My Deep Bedding is completely odor-free.

It's an absolutely bone-dry system, dry enough that it can't support the growth of pathogens. The amount of litter used dries out the poop almost instantly and the ventilation prevents any possible build up of ammonia or moisture.

There is no odor at cleaning time either -- again because it's perfectly dry. Of course I wear a mask to filter particulates, but we should all wear masks at any time when we're cleaning the coop regardless of our manure management system. The straw and shavings are not heavy either -- because they are dry.

When I wrote my Deep Bedding article I admitted that distaste for the idea of manure accumulating and finding the Big Cleanout chore intimidating were two valid reasons to dislike the system. But on the flip side you get the advantage of not having to handle poop as part of your daily chores and a significant savings of time overall.

Personally, I cannot imagine either cleaning my chicken coop before I've even had a cup of coffee in the morning or cleaning ANY animal facility twice daily.

Fortunately, there are many good systems to accommodate many different personal preferences. I encourage people to try different ones until they come up with what works best in their unique circumstances.

You are certainly doing deep bedding right, then!

Later: Now that I've read your very excellent article, I see that I was describing with distaste the system I used for decades, deep litter, and you were defending the much better, drier system you described, deep bedding. I'm not sure I could have accomplished that type of dry deep bedding with a barn full of goats peeing gallons, but it sounds great for chickens!
And you make very good points against daily cleaning, especially that with sand or dirt you must clean whether you want to or not, and someone watching your chickens must clean every day, too.
Thanks for the information and the great article!

 

[Outta Here]

"But on the flip side you get the advantage of not having to handle poop as part of your daily chores and a significant savings of time overall.
Personally, I cannot imagine either cleaning my chicken coop before I've even had a cup of coffee in the morning or cleaning ANY animal facility twice daily."

I completely understand. Cleaning my deep bedded barn for decades was sheer nasty drudgery and I wouldn't have done it before coffee, either. I raised my chickens with goats, so thats a lot more moisture, too. I wish I would have known then how you do it with no moisture or smell. And we ran a 50-dog boarding kennel that had to be cleaned multiple times a day. Yeah, that was real nasty.
But as for my little chicken coop now, I love walking barefoot out into the dark cool desert morning with a sky full of stars and the moon to greet me. I smell the wonderful morning smells and hear a dove waking or distant coyotes singing and I luxuriate in the feeling of soft dirt under my toes. I said I do it in my pj's, but truthfully just undies and a tank top (we're remote), the better to feel the morning air on my skin. Even before I got this batch of chicks, both my husband and I have always walked outside in the dark morning to breathe in the wonderful smells of nature. Guess milking goats for 30 years gave me that habit....It's a ritual of life's pleasure to start the day outside before the sun wakes. More important even than coffee.
Because my chicken house is inside a dark shop, I turn a small light on farthest from them to gradually wake them, then greet them and as the rooster crows, I open the lid to their pen and pet each one. They hop down and go outside, and then I do my contemplative, satisfying, 5 minute job of making their pen as clean as my kitchen--minus sand on my floor. I carry the screen horizontally out behind my garden to dump it in the compost pile, smelling the damp earth and budding vegetables.
At night before I lock them in, it takes me only about 2 minutes because I just lean over the wall and rake any droppings into a dog pooper scooper. I don't even have to go in the coop. That's 7 minutes a day.
And then there's coffee....

 

[3KillerBs]

Later: Now that I've read your very excellent article, I see that I was describing with distaste the system I used for decades, deep litter, and you were defending the much better, drier system you described, deep bedding. I'm not sure I could have accomplished that type of dry deep bedding with a barn full of goats peeing gallons, but it sounds great for chickens!

I do Deep Litter in my run, adding more dry organic material at the first hint of any odor, but getting a balanced, actively-composting system going inside a building is a far, far more difficult task.

I am blessed with very well-drained soil, which helps tremendously.

, I love walking barefoot out into the dark cool desert morning with a sky full of stars and the moon to greet me. I smell the wonderful morning smells and hear a dove waking or distant coyotes singing and I luxuriate in the feeling of soft dirt under my toes.

Alas, I have largely been trained out of going barefoot by fire ants, holly leaves, and centipede grass (which is like walking on ball bearings because it has so many joints).

Though I am a natural morning person, my contemplative time is in the evening -- often sitting in a chair in my chicken run with my evening Bible study or just a book on my phone while the sun sets and the bats come out.

 

[Outta Here]

I do Deep Litter in my run, adding more dry organic material at the first hint of any odor, but getting a balanced, actively-composting system going inside a building is a far, far more difficult task.

I am blessed with very well-drained soil, which helps tremendously.



Alas, I have largely been trained out of going barefoot by fire ants, holly leaves, and centipede grass (which is like walking on ball bearings because it has so many joints).

Though I am a natural morning person, my contemplative time is in the evening -- often sitting in a chair in my chicken run with my evening Bible study or just a book on my phone while the sun sets and the bats come out.

Ah, Bible study in a chair in the chicken run in the evening sounds marvelous! Morning or evening or midday, we all need our soul-soothing relaxation time, don't we? My best meditation time is playing hymns on the harp on the porch with the chickens or on some mountain or by some stream with the dogs. I know this is a chicken forum, not a harp one, but I want to share with you the pretty places I've been blessed to worship with my harps.