treating the ground?

I would tend to think that mother nature will take care of anything since you dont plan to use til next spring.

 

I'm sure someone with more knowlege and experience will be along soon to give a better answer, but if it were me, I'd just rake it, sprinkle a little garden lime on and let Mother Nature do her work.

 

Best thing I've been told is to dig down 6" or so and either replace the soil or burn it. Different dieases and parisites can live months if not years in the right conditions.

 

If it's your place and you haven't had a outbreak of anything... I wouldn't do anything. I've had chickens for a decade with groups over lapping and intermingling no problem. And back in the 50's, the ground here was covered with thousands upon thousands of commercial white leghorns.

 

The easiest thing to do is to lime it heavily then till it under. Let it lie awhile, then do it again. What commercial operations actually do is use this huge blow torch thing and incinerate the ground, killing everything nasty in there. Silkiechicken is right, though. If it's been awhile (years) since birds were on that ground, it's probably fine. It'd make me feel better to lime it, though.

 

Is it really necessary to disinfect the ground? If it were me, I would just rake up any left over poo and let the ground dry out in the sunshine for a while. The sun can kill germs too, especially over a few weeks or months.