Wood products are usually your best bet here. Wood shavings, especially pine, are a good choice, as are sawdust, mulch, and even old newspapers, which have the added sustainability advantage of having already been reused once. Spread a thick layer of bedding on the floor of the coop.
Dispose of the chicken poop by putting it in the compost pile. It's full of both the browns (litter like wood shavings) and the greens (poop) you need to build a good compost, so into the compost bin it goes!
Wood shavings are an ideal material for your coop flooring. They give off a pleasant smell throughout your garden when kept inside. When pine shavings are scattered around the outside of the coop, they absorb moisture to prevent bacteria from growing and causing illnesses in your flock.
Quicklime, which is calcium oxide, and hydrated lime, which is calcium hydroxide, are the two common forms of lime you will find in garden or home improvement retail stores. Adding a dry alkali such as lime accelerates the volatilization of the nitrogen in chicken manure, which releases the ammonia faster.
White vinegar, baking soda, and sunlight can all do an amazing job of killing bacteria, mold, and pathogens. Ultraviolet rays are also a powerful disinfectant, and vinegar kills many types of mold, as does baking soda. Using all in combination will keep your chicken feeders and waterers clean and your chickens healthy.
In addition to cleaning and disinfecting, producers can use lime in poultry houses to control pathogens (and reduce fly problems). According to current research, lime is effective at preventing the following poultry diseases: Avian influenza. Newcastle disease.
Coarse sand (also known as builder's sand, but not the finer play sand) has become increasingly popular as a flooring in the chicken coop, and it's certainly helpful in keeping the flock cool in the summer months. Easy to maintain and a boon in keeping flies away, for the small to medium sized run it's a good option.
Spray your entire coop down with your hose and or a cleaner of your choice. Increasing the pressure on areas with caked-on poop can soften it up and make it easier to scrape off later. Remember, do not use bleach! Scrub everything down; use your brush and scraper to scrub off any caked-on poop.
Once a week, scoop up all the droppings and lay down a new fresh bedding inside the coop. 1-2x a year, conduct a deep clean of the coop to ensure it's still a happy and healthy place for your chickens.
Chickens generally will only poop in the nesting boxes if they are sleeping in them at night. Often young pullets who have just been introduced to the big girls coop will try to sleep in the boxes instead of on the roosts with the older hens.
As with deer, however, there are plenty of herbs that can be incorporated into the landscape that chickens will avoid. These include: borage, calendula (pot marigold), catnip, chives, feverfew, lavender, marjoram, Mexican sage, peppermint and spearmint, rosemary, sage, salvias, St. John's wort, tansy and yarrow.
Give her a treat each time. After a week of this, leave out the treat but continue with the clicker or whistle. By now, the sound will make her run to the litter tray to poo. After a few more days, she will simply associate the urge to poo with the need to visit the litter tray.
How Often Do Chickens Poop? Although in little quantities, chickens poop at least 15 times a day. Chickens poop at least 15 times a day but in little quantities. However, when the hen is breeding, she spends more time with her eggs and only goes out twice a day to find food and excrete poop.
The most basic option for cleaning your chook coop is a mixture of vinegar and water-either ACV or white vinegar will work. Simply mix about 15ml of vinegar with water in a spray bottle. Spray on and wipe off with a damp rag or sponge and voila… clean, fresh smelling coop!
Having a chicken coop without a floor can come with many challenges, including infestations of mice and rats. Still, some chicken keepers swear by the dirt floor method, and have discovered numerous ways to deal with the inherent problems. There are many reasons you may want a coop without a floor.
It's effective and won't harm the environment, our lungs or our pets. So I started using plain white vinegar and water to clean my coop, and to scrub out the feeders and waterers. And it worked really well, but didn't really smell all that good!
Some chicken owners say that their chickens don't like walking on small gravel, but it is a longer lasting option to hardwood or shavings so can be very cost effective.
Aesthetically, sand looks cleaner than other litter option and is cleaner; the Auburn University researchers found coliform counts, including E. coli, significantly lower in sand than in wood shavings. Sand continues to be recommended by poultry experts and veterinarians today.
Mix up equal parts white vinegar and water in a bucket OR just slosh straight vinegar onto your wet floor. I preferred the sloshing method personally. Take your broom or brush and give everything a vigorous scrubbing, making sure to distribute the vinegar solution as thoroughly as possible.
You may opt to spread the lime evenly over the top of your soil with a shovel, or you can use an agricultural spreader or fertilizer spreader machine for easy application.
Medium- to coarse-grained sand is the best chicken coop bedding as it's non-toxic, dries quickly, stays clean, is low in pathogens, and has low levels of dust. Sand is a much safer choice than all other bedding materials.
Using lemon juice, lime juice or vinegar to wash off chicken and fish before cooking is a common practice in the West Indies/Caribbean. Before the invention of refrigerators, people applied an acidic solution because they thought it would kill any bacteria on the chicken, and also give a hint of extra flavor.