I've written a lot in the past about the fun of owning chickens: the fresh eggs, the entertainment factor, and the comfort of knowing your eggs come from well-cared-for hens. All these things are great, but there is some drudgery involved in owning chickens. Specifically, you've got to clean that coop.
I clean our chicken coop once a week. Now the we have five chickens, it could probably use a twice-weekly cleaning, but, well, we have full-time jobs and a baby, so... that's not going to happen. Every Sunday, I give the coop a thorough scrubbing, which involves removing and cleaning the slatted floors, changing the straw and washing and refilling the waterers.
The key to easy coop cleaning is to have a couple of simple tools to help you efficiently remove all the chicken poop and gather up the soiled bedding. Most of the tools I use to clean my coop come from the hardware store. They include:
- Sprayer hose: You need a good, hard stream to spray the poop off any of your detachable coop parts (perches, removable floor, food and water containers)
- Metal dust pan
: This is great for scooping up dirty straw and shavings (and dumping them on your compost pile)
- A cheap metal wall scraper
: This tool is extremely handy for scraping off dried-on poop and gathering up shavings hidden in a corner
- An old metal barbecue brush
: If you really need to scrub a dirty perch or coop floor clean, these can work great. Just make sure you mark it so no one accidentally uses it on your grill.
Once I've removed the poop and dirt from the various coop parts, I set them to dry in the sun for extra stain and odor removal. Of course, I'm lucky to live in Southern California, where it's sunny and dry more often than not.
Depending on the type of run you have, you'll probably also need a shovel or heavy garden rake to turn the dirt floor. You might also want to clean your water containers with vinegar every once in a while to get rid of any gunk that might have built up.
But really, that's it. The whole coop-cleaning process takes me about 20 or 30 minutes of active time, with an interval while I wait for the removable floor to dry. And if it's rainy, I just skip the spray-off step and scrape as much poop as possible off using my wall scraper.
Thanks for these tips. Good information for a newbie to know. :)
When I was in high school my buddy would come over with a pellet rifle when I cleaned my parent's coop. He did so because when I pulled out the floor of the coop, there were always rats that would run for cover. He would plink away, but I don't think he ever hit anything. Looking back, my parent's coop was not well-designed. Any coop that comes with a built in rat's nest can't be a good idea.