stinky coop/ garage

[bjoys]

Hi everyone, I am new to using this forum. I signed up to find some advice for my little smell problem. Our chicken house is a lean-to off the garage, on the north side of the garage. My husband works from home, and his office is actually also built into the garage and shares a wall with the chicken house. For a long time we had between 10-30 chickens, egg layers, and didn't have a problem with smell. Even when we had a dozen layers and 30 meat birds for a time a couple of years ago, the smell didn't get to bad. At that time, the "ventilation system" was that the chickens lived in the western half of the lean-to, and that had wood on the bottom and chicken wire at the top, and the east side of the lean-to was for storage, and was completely open on the east side. Well, we closed in the east side to make the area we had for chickens bigger so that we could do more meat birds. We took out some of the sheet metal on the north side to make a large window, covered with chicken wire. The new window is about 5'x4'.
We currently have 17 hens, 2 roosters, 3 home hatched chicks, 29 Cornish Cross about 6 weeks old, and 35 Cornish Cross about 4 weeks old. The younger Cornish Cross are divided off into half of the house that does not have access to the outside. The older Cornish Crosses are in with the hens and get to go outside.
Now Dh is really complaining about the smell, and I have to admit the garage is really stinky. Although we have lots of flies and spiders in the chicken house, the smell in there isn't too bad. It seems to all be absorbed by the garage it's attached to. Dh wants to get an exhaust fan to blow the smell out the north side of the building. I don't think it's worth the expense and would like to know if there is a better way to deal with this. I am thinking, take off more paneling for more air flow, adding more or different kind of bedding...... we are currently using wheat straw because I can get that for free, but wondering if I really need to use pine shavings.
Oh, we have a dirt floor, again with deep straw litter. We add more litter, like 50lbs of straw, every couple of months. Do we need to add it more often than that? We just added more a week ago and it didn't seem to help with the smell. And dh doesn't want me to leave the door open in the garage to vent that out because then the flies get in there......... The more I type the more this sounds like a disaster!!!! Any advice?

 

[4 the Birds]

The straw floor is problematic. As it builds up and compacts it will stay wet down below indefinitely. As the chickens scratch down they expose wet and smelly straw. I know this because our chickens do the same to the hay bin area at the goat house which has a lot of straw and hay. Fortunately it is an outside area. My suggestion is to remove all the floor bedding with a pitch fork and it will be a chore! Wet compacted straw is very heavy! Add a sand floor or even lay scrap plywood on the exposed dirt. I would then add several inches of pine chips. The plywood will help keep mud down if the chickens do dig down. Of course plenty of ventilation. A good air/scent freshener to the office area and you can add an air purifier if all else fails or if you have the funds. DH must not mind a little "clucking" working next to that size flock. Hope this helps!

Chickens hanging out at the goat house

 

[bjoys]

Thank you for the advice. I'm definitely going to have to switch to pine shavings I guess. I didn't know about sand. Soon I will have less chickens, too, so that will help. Will be butchering some next week and my kids and I are building a mobile coop for the pasture for the layers. More work for them going out to the pasture to feed and water and move them, but less stink for dh! But I will still be raising young chicks in the chicken house by his office. He is not thrilled with sharing the building with livestock. I have joked about adding goats and calves, but he is not amused. But he's supportive of my efforts to become more self-sufficient with food, and would like to see us start a small chicken business, so he puts up with the noise and stuff. The smell is too much though.

 

[RWD]

Moisture = smell. No moisture no smell. The floor is holding moisture, maybe from a leak in roof, or a lot of rain, or bedding needs to be changed more often with that many chickens. Solid wood floor or sand will make a huge difference.

 

[humphrey farms]

Moisture = smell. No moisture no smell. The floor is holding moisture, maybe from a leak in roof, or a lot of rain, or bedding needs to be changed more often with that many chickens. Solid wood floor or sand will make a huge difference.

I too find that my coop stinks after many days of heavy rain. My coop sits on a rubber matting(on the ground) and is 8 x10'. Being spring/summer I put very little shavings on the floor because the chickens spend most of the days free ranging and I have poop boards. BUT when it pours the smell is gagging! We have dried sand. I didn't find much difference. Also I don't leave food/water in my coop. It only adds to the mess. I hand scatter feed outside. Multiple waters outside in different locations helps, too.

However, in the fall/winter I had to put boards down to walk on. A friend whose family farms locally had me deep litter w/straw in the winter. Once a month we raked it out onto the snow for the chickens to walk on. We laid fresh straw down. Come spring we used a pitch fork and small tractor and moved all the mess into the gardens where it was plowed into the earth before planting.No flies here. Thank the Lord!!