Poop management

[Xtina]

Quote:
I think that it is fantastic that you pick up the poop on walks. Although most good owners will pick up their dog's mess on walks I have seen enough who don't pick it up, claim their dogs will only go once (one guy said this just as his dog did one right in front of us) on a walk or those who will bag it and then either leave it by the path or hang it off of bushes or signs (sort of a smelly Christmas ornament

).

I don't know what the solution is if you don't want to hand scoop the poops. Training the dogs to only go in one place and having a dog poo composting solution next to the entrance/exit would make it easier but it still would have to be scooped up. Other wise I'm stumped.

What do you have in your chicken run? I am leaning towards sand personally but there are others that lean towards the deep litter method and they claim that with this you only have to clean out once or twice a year. Both camps say that it helps with flies and smell. I think they both sound pretty easy and low effort.

When I said "by hand" I meant just that, putting my hand inside a plastic bag, picking up the poop, and flipping the bag inside out and tying it up. That's what I do on walks. I don't mind the backyard picking up "by hand" with a shovel or poop scooper. I just don't like the way it tears up the grass and never really manages to get all of the poop. And once the grass gets even a little high, you can't even find all the poop. I'm asking my husband to help me construct a sandy, covered area where they'll want to put all of their poop and training them to use it. Hopefully, that'll help the problem by a lot.

I mostly let my chickens free range. They have a run attached to their coop, which I'm covering frequently with sawdust, since I have a bunch of it left over from when I was brooding them. This is my first time doing the deep litter method. One obstacle is the placement of the ramp into the coop. It's placed so I can't easily shovel underneath it. I think I might take it out. Outside the run in the chicken pen, there's just bare dirt, but it's underneath a hazelnut tree, so it has a natural cover of a lot of broken hazelnut shells. Yesterday I raked them all to line the back fence, taking all the chicken poop that was there with it. There normally isn't much poop in that section. The real issue is the chicken poop that winds up in the grass.

 

[Xtina]

Quote:
The yard is totally clean now after the job I did yesterday. I think I made it sound like some kind of situation where there were huge mountains of poop that would take a hazmat crew a few weeks working full-time to dig out. Based on your posts, I think that's the impression you got! It took me about 30 - 45 minutes to get it as spic-and-span as possible with the grass problem. I just feel like my neighbors have their yards under control a lot more and want advice getting my yard cleaner by hearing how other people manage their poop. That said, if I could find biodegradable bags, I'd buy 'em. At least until I get a composter set up.

I was very close to putting down/rehoming my dogs a few months ago. I talked to a lot of people, including the vet who would have put down the one who bit. He told me that the advice I'd gotten to euthanize her was probably a little overblown given her disposition. So I started contacting shelters around the country that specialize in taking on dogs that are "unadoptable." They all told me the same thing: "She's not bad enough for our shelter." I couldn't find anyone who would take her, and after listening to the perspective of the people who handle this type of dog, I over-reacted and didn't take seriously enough my obligation to create a place where I could keep her. They said that she could live outside without endangering my son, if she could be kept away from the chickens, and that that obstacle was not worth euthanizing her over. At that point, I decided that she'd probably rather be an outdoor dog than a dead dog. By that time, the pullets had gotten big enough, and she miraculously stopped bothering them. She had never threatened my previous adult flock...I guess the young girls were just more exciting because they ran around faster. So she lives outside pretty much whenever my son is awake and moving. When he's asleep, she's kept out of the upstairs by two baby gates. If she were to get through one, she couldn't get through the other. Anyway, she's not considered trustworthy, but a few months of living outdoors all day calmed her down by a lot. I never let her around my son when he's up and moving.

I honestly would love to not have dogs anymore. But the options are putting a dog that I don't fully trust in someone else's home, which I don't feel ethically right about, or putting down two healthy dogs, which I also don't feel is ethically sound.

 

[AinaWGSD]

You are very brave to come here to admit to being lazy and messy

That's the first step, recognizing that you have a problem and making the decision that you want to do something about it. Personally, working on both a small scale and large scale level with dogs and dog waste management (I own two dogs, but work for a vet clinic where I was responsible for cleaning up after the dogs for a few years and I have volunteered many hours with a local dog rescue that has anywhere from 4-10 dogs at any given time) and what I find works best is to just get into the habit of picking it up every day. With my own dogs and the vet I work with, once a day is plenty adequate. Admittedly, I often skip a day or three at home...especially if it's snowy or rainy and ugly, although if I go for more than two or three days I really regret it when I do get around to picking up. With the rescue, I would let the dogs out 3-4 times a day and scoop every single time after the dogs were put back up.

As for how to pick up the poo, I personally prefer doing it with my hands. I dislike pooper scoopers because I have always found them to be cumbersome and ineffective, especially on grass (they aren't too bad on bark mulch though). I have a box of latex gloves and I put one on and go out there with a plastic bag and it all goes into the bag and then into the garbage. The glove allows me to get more of the stool as well as some of the sloppier stuff (nothing will get liquid diarrhea) and to get more of it out of taller grass. In our last house we did have a doggy dooley, but with our cold winters here it was a pain since we couldn't use it once it got to freezing. Since I was already in the habit of doing it for my dogs, I just started picking up the chicken poop I see as I'm going. I had been throwing it in the same plastic bag as the dog poop, but I have just started carrying a bucket to throw the chicken poop in so I can toss it in the compost.

My method may not work for you, but it's one more idea on waste management. My yard isn't so clean that I will let my two year old (or anyone else for that matter) out there barefoot. But it's not so bad that I cringe everytime someone forgets to take their shoes off before coming inside. And while I do have a lot of flies in the back yard, it doesn't really smell.

 

[Hunterlauren93]

My neighbors have three dogs and have a small back yard. My chicken flew over into their yard, and i had to go get him before she let her dogs out. There was poo everywhere. When they mow the grass it stinks to high heavens, and sunny days.... i aint even goin there. we have a dog and chickens and our yard never smells. The coop gets cleaned out all the time. I just wish they would pick uup their poo, its like a land mine. Granted it is their yard, but its an awful smell.

 

[Xtina]

Well, after yesterday, I followed through today with picking up every dog poop that I saw occur. There may be more out there. I didn't get a chance to do a full yard-clean. Blackberry removal took a priority. Hopefully I'll be able to get to it tomorrow and get in the habit of doing it every day. Part of what I realized today is that the dog pee is as much of a problem as the dog and chicken poo. There was nearly no poo in the yard, but it still had the same smell, and I bet all along the smell that's been bothering me is their pee. I really can't think of what to do about that. Hopefully when I create a sand litter box, that will help keep the smell down. I wonder if any of those hormone sprays you can buy at the pet store to teach your dog where you want them to go would help? And maybe I could put up a post for my male dog to pee on....and surround it with lavender or something!

 

[Yonaton]

Get rid of some of the pets. It's plainly obvious that the 'yard' is way too small for so many...and it's *NOT* going to get any better or easier. It's rather irresponsible to keep getting more and more pets and putting them in the situation of having to live in those conditions. If *you* are bothered spo badly by the oder, imagine what those poor animals are going through who can smell far, far better than humans can.

 

[Nicole01]

Take a hose and wash it down after you pick up the poop. We never had a problem with smell, but all our animals except the chickens are fixed. I do know that unfixed dogs(especially males) have a horrid urine smell. I don't know if there is a product you can use either store boughten or natural to neutralize the urine in your yard. After you hose it down, keep the sprinkler on for a while.

 

[Keltara]

Quote:
The yard is totally clean now after the job I did yesterday. I think I made it sound like some kind of situation where there were huge mountains of poop that would take a hazmat crew a few weeks working full-time to dig out. Based on your posts, I think that's the impression you got! It took me about 30 - 45 minutes to get it as spic-and-span as possible with the grass problem. I just feel like my neighbors have their yards under control a lot more and want advice getting my yard cleaner by hearing how other people manage their poop. That said, if I could find biodegradable bags, I'd buy 'em. At least until I get a composter set up.

I was very close to putting down/rehoming my dogs a few months ago. I talked to a lot of people, including the vet who would have put down the one who bit. He told me that the advice I'd gotten to euthanize her was probably a little overblown given her disposition. So I started contacting shelters around the country that specialize in taking on dogs that are "unadoptable." They all told me the same thing: "She's not bad enough for our shelter." I couldn't find anyone who would take her, and after listening to the perspective of the people who handle this type of dog, I over-reacted and didn't take seriously enough my obligation to create a place where I could keep her. They said that she could live outside without endangering my son, if she could be kept away from the chickens, and that that obstacle was not worth euthanizing her over. At that point, I decided that she'd probably rather be an outdoor dog than a dead dog. By that time, the pullets had gotten big enough, and she miraculously stopped bothering them. She had never threatened my previous adult flock...I guess the young girls were just more exciting because they ran around faster. So she lives outside pretty much whenever my son is awake and moving. When he's asleep, she's kept out of the upstairs by two baby gates. If she were to get through one, she couldn't get through the other. Anyway, she's not considered trustworthy, but a few months of living outdoors all day calmed her down by a lot. I never let her around my son when he's up and moving.

I honestly would love to not have dogs anymore. But the options are putting a dog that I don't fully trust in someone else's home, which I don't feel ethically right about, or putting down two healthy dogs, which I also don't feel is ethically sound.

I'm sure it feels good to have everything cleaned up. Maintaining it should be no problem at this point. Please be careful with that baby boy. If it were me, and a pet dog bit my baby I would not hesitate to put it down, but that's just me. Everyone has their own judgement calls to make.

Here's a link where you can buy biodegradable garbage bags (all different sizes available).
http://www.google.com/search?source...gc.r_pw.&fp=9e80c09949391b47&biw=1366&bih=643