Wannabe chicken owner here. I was thinking of getting chickens for a while now but felt sobad about them staying outside freezing or being out at night with all the predators and then I found this thread! I have 2 bathrooms. One is mine alone and a pretty nice size. I wouldn't mind sharing with chickens depending on the smell. Its all tile, big stand up shower so think poop clean up would be easy but do chickens in general smell? How about their feed? I'm looking into 3 silkies for the kids, hopefully to show. I wouldn't mind them running through the house but would need to make sure the cats are out at the time.
It's much the same as most other animals, or so it seems to me so far: if it's wet, it stinks. Cat boxes, snake cages, tortoise pens, chicken cages... moisture = something to linger on your nostrils. If you have a humid day, odors might linger or come out of hiding despite your best efforts, and fresh, wet poop is always going to have a more obvious stink (though brief.) Also if your chickens have watery poops or have consumed something particularly olfactory-tingling, the smell is likely to linger, but that will just be until they get that out of their system. Bathrooms are pretty humid places... if that's going to be where the chickens stay and the shower gets ran at all, you're asking for stink! Ventilation will be one of your biggest allies, both for the sake of your nose and their health. For chickens, you want bone dry! Poops won't dry very quickly on something like a shower floor, and if you're running the shower head at all, you're probably going to have some stink.
For cooped up indoors anything, substrate is best. Think dehydrating when it comes to your substrate! Pine chips are great for this. They suck the moisture right out of poops and tend to coat them (extra good against the nose's #1 enemy: the cecal poop,) and they have a pleasant natural odor. Aspen should also work, it is just pricier! On rainy days when the humidity is high, it's only a little bit more help just as a warning. The smell isn't really terrible, just present. If you really wanted to use the shower stall instead of a ventilated enclosure with, I'd slap a plug on that sucker and put aspen or pine at the bottom. Say no to humidity and make it a dry environment. If you can, I'd also keep the shower door open and maybe cover it with a panel of chicken wire... ventilation is your friend to avoid smells! Shop vac out the substrate when you're cleaning! This also helps take care of chicken dust flying out while you do maintenance and sticking to the stuff in your bathroom. I change a fair amount of my bedding once a day, being sure to remove all visible poops, but that's for one small chicken. Once when you wake up and once before bed would probably be easier. To keep ambient humidity down, don't run the shower or sink, and keep the toilet lid down. All open water sources contribute to ambient humidity, and you want the only sources to be your chicken waterer (poultry nipples would be a good choice here) and your chickens themselves.
As for feed stink, if it's fresh and dry, it should smell just as it does in the bag!
