Treats for Chickens
  • Home
  • Buy Online
  • Buy In Store
  • Blog
  • About
  • FAQs
  • Contact

A Backyard Chicken Blog

Quick Tips on Keeping Your Chicken Coop Clean

11/14/2018

13 Comments

 
Picture
Raising chickens in your backyard is not only a good way to enjoy naturally-raised eggs every  day, but it's also good fun. Many people are surprised by how therapeutic watching a small flock of hens after a busy day at work can be. Author Clea Danaan wrote a book called, Zen and the Art of Raising Chickens: The Way of the Hen, that describes how watching and tending to chickens triggers the release of oxytocin, which helps lower stress hormones.

The only real downside to raising backyard chickens is keeping the chicken coop clean. The good news is that there are a few things you can do to make this dreaded job easy. And these steps to ensure a clean environment for your flock will become increasingly more important as the weather cools and the birds spend more time in the coop.

Why Cleaning Your Chicken Coop is Important

Even though chickens don't mind messy quarters as much as humans do, they do much better when they're kept in a clean environment. Cleaning the coop every single day decreases the odds of the chickens developing poultry mites, respiratory infections, and skin problems. Your hens will reward your efforts to keep the coop clean by producing high quality eggs. The clean coop smells better, making it less attractive to predators like weasels and foxes.

Tips on How to Easily Keep Your Chicken Coop Clean

If you haven't already done so, you should consider painting both the interior and exterior of your chicken coop. Not only does this make the coop more attractive, but it also decreases the amount of dust that sticks to the boards, which decreases the amount of time you spend cleaning the chicken coop each day.
  • You don't have to completely remove all of the sawdust on the bottom of your chicken coop each day, but you will want to use a rake and remove all of the droppings. The odds are pretty good that the dirtiest part of the chicken coop is under their roost. When the sawdust gets low, you'll need to add more.
  • Examine the straw you've used to line the laying boxes. Remove feathers, droppings, and broken eggs. If the straw is dusty, you'll want to remove it and replace it with fresh, clean straw.
  • About once a week, you should completely remove all the bedding and sawdust from the chicken coop and hose the inside. This removes insect eggs, pockets of dust, other debris, and most important germs and bacteria that could harm your hens. Use dish soap and a disinfectant such as Virkon S to fully disinfect the chicken coop. If you don't have any Virkon S, you can also use bleach, though it's not quite as effective.
  • Empty the water dish, scrub it out, and refill it. This should be done twice a day.

It's in your best interest to clean the chicken coop at least once a day. When you stay on top of the cleaning process, manure, straw, wet sawdust, and bits of dropped food won't build up. Spending five minutes a day cleaning means you won't have to dedicate an entire Saturday afternoon to mucking out the chicken coop.

Each time you clean the coop, take a minute to examine it and make sure there aren't any sharp edges or broken bits that could injure your hens.

What to do with Waste Collected from the Chicken Coop

Dealing with the waste collected from the chicken coop is another unpleasant chore. The best thing to do with this is to build a compost bin, and fill it with the chicken waste (manure, sawdust, straw, etc.). Once it breaks down, it will be a wonderful source of fertilizer for your lawn, trees, flower bed, and garden. Once you get into a chicken coop cleaning routine, you'll find that it's not nearly as bad a chore as you thought it would be, plus it gives you an excuse to hang out with your hens.

13 Comments
Ikechukwu
11/19/2018 08:48:57 am

Handling the waste from my poultry farm has always been an issue but with this blog post , I think I now know what exactly to do to my benefit . Thanks a lot for sharing

Reply
Ikenna Mike
11/19/2018 01:18:28 pm

Quite informative , ,many poultry farmers needs to subscribe to this blog and learn how to handle their birds.

Reply
Michelle Dave
11/19/2018 02:15:30 pm

As regards not removing the saw dust, my birds usually litter the saw dust with their droppings, I remove them on a daily basis. the activity is quite stressful , I may try tip addressing this and observe carefully for a difference

Reply
Rebecca sharks
11/19/2018 09:26:52 pm

A compost bin to fertilize the lawn...? sounds like a great idea, but considering the odour wont it be affect the fresh air I enjoy whenever I want to stay in the lawn ?

Reply
Danny Scott
11/19/2018 10:28:25 pm

I cant help but agree with this post in all ramifications,the chicken coop needs to be cleaned regularly. These tips are quite helpful, I want to equally add that the feet of the hens needs to be checked for fecal wastes to avoid avoid contamination of the cleaned coop.

Reply
Joyce Wesley
11/20/2018 03:35:45 pm

Great post ... the idea of using the waste from the poultry farm for compost pin will be helpful for making my home garden more fertile. Thanks for sharing

Reply
Francisca Seth
11/20/2018 03:51:10 pm

Fantastic post! quite informative in every sense, there is always something to learn whenever I read this blog . Kudos !keep the good job.

Reply
Iyke
11/21/2018 03:40:33 am

very comprehensive post. The contents of this post speaks a lot about the experience the writer. From my experience as well, I have learnt that keeping your chicken clean is not just about cleaning its about ensuring that the coop remains in good condition entirely. I was enthralled when I deduced the same thing form this post

Reply
Rose
11/21/2018 04:03:58 am

Another great post, I think I will get my friends who are also poultry farmers to read this. It is quite informative

Reply
Ken Aldrin
11/21/2018 04:10:32 am

I think chickens are generally prone to respiratory infections but with maintaining a regular cleaning regimen will really minimize this.

Reply
diane
11/21/2018 04:19:12 am

I always feel it is impossible to clean the coop without removing the saw dust for the coop. This post is really an eye-opener, Thanks for sharing

Reply
felix
11/21/2018 04:28:53 am

I really find it difficult to clean the coop everyday and this explains the build up of wastes in the coop, I really need to plan effectively and incorporate it to my daily routine.

Reply
Eli Mcmullen link
2/25/2020 02:23:05 pm

Thanks for mentioning that sawdust should be completely replaced every week when maintaining a chicken coop. My uncle is planning on starting a farm since he recently inherited some land from his late father, but he needs to find some replaceable insulation for his chickens. Maybe he should use sawdust since it can be easily replaced each week.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    PopWorms! Blog

    Archives

    January 2023
    December 2022
    October 2022
    September 2022
    June 2022
    January 2022
    November 2021
    August 2021
    May 2021
    March 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Site Map
Home
Shop
About
Contact Us
Products
PopWorms! ECO™
PopWorms! PRO™
PopWorms! LIVE™
Dried Product
​Live Product
Shipping
Site-wide
$4 Flat Rate Shipping
Picture
Picture
All Rights Reserved
© PopWorms! 2018
Aggie Owned and Operated
Picture
Picture
  • Home
  • Buy Online
  • Buy In Store
  • Blog
  • About
  • FAQs
  • Contact