{Mavis and Black Fatty}
Kathy in Chicago writes:
Mavis – you obviously love your chickens… but I don’t think I’ve ever have seen you blog out the mess they make & what you need to do in terms of cleaning their pen… I would love to have chickens, but no one ever seems to talk about… scooping…. Is there a delicate way you can discuss how you need to maintain their cleanliness for their health? Perhaps show what really needs to be done?
About once a month The Girl Who Thinks She’s a Bird or I go out and give the chicken coop and chicken run a good cleaning. One of the ways I am able to garden without using chemicals is by using chicken fertilizer to enrich my vegetable crops. It’s not pretty, but I think it’s worth it.
Pine shavings. I love them. Here in the Pacific Northwest it can get pretty muddy in the winter and spring months. Since our chicken run is uncovered, about once a month we spread 2 bags of pine shavings in the chicken yard.
Not only do the pine shavings help keep the chicken yard from becoming one giant mud pit, but they entertain the chickens for a few days as well as they work the pine shavings into the soil.
I also use pine shavings in the chickens nesting boxes. When the shavings get dirty, I just toss them out and add clean shavings.
That is how I am able to keep our eggs so clean.
We place the chickens watering cans on a little bridge in the center of the chicken yard. These typically get filled every 5 days or so, and each time we fill the watering cans we clean them as well.
Chicken feed. Because we have so many chickens now, we fill up their orange chicken food bin about every 3 days. The chickens also feast on free produce scraps from the local grocery store and every few days I like to give them a little cracked corn for an afternoon treat. We keep their feed in mini trash cans {that have super tight lids} outside near the coop.
It can be a messy job {especially in the winter} but it’s worth it. We have a happy, clean flock and they lay some pretty awesome eggs if I do say so myself.
Let me know if you have anymore questions and I will try and answer them in the comment section below.
Peace Out Girl Scouts,
~Mavis
If you are thinking about getting a flock of your own, check out the book Homemade Living: Keeping Chickens with Ashley English: All You Need to Know to Care for a Happy, Healthy Flock. Amazon currently has the book in stock and ready to ship.
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Long Island Grower says
We are going to use Pine shavings in our coop as part of the Deep Litter method, but were debating on what to do about the mud in our pen. We have about a 40 foot by 15 foot chicken run which the coops reside in. Covering it with store bought shavings every month is a bit much for us because of the square footage, so we were going to take advantage of a local tree cutting service giving away free wood chips. Are wood chips a good option to cover a run, as opposed to more fine shavings? Do you think our ever plentiful pine needle supply from our trees would provide a good enough cover?
Laura at TenThingsFarm says
I use pine mulch from the Division of Forestry and it works really well. It gives our hens something to scratch in, keeps things dry if it’s rainy, etc. It has worked well for us. 🙂
Misty says
How is Matilda doing?
Sara says
Well we rent and our landLORD wont let me keep chickens. SOOOOOO how would I hide lets say 6 (that is what my local Tractor Supply said I have to buy do to state regulations) chickens. I would so love to have my own.
Long Island grower says
As someone who has years of experience renting, as well as family who did real estate professionally, it is HIGHLY advisable to never ever go against anything in a verbal or written lease or agreement. The fct you were told no after asking makes it even more problematic. Hiding any animal typically lasts only so long. Even if the hiding was successful, people are bound to see or hear an animal eventually and could very well tell a landlord or someone related to them. If any crazy situation occurred where te animal or a person was injured, even if a child is scratched, you are in serious hot water. If you are ever caught with any animal, a lease may very well stipulate your agreement can be terminated immediately, as it is business law and a binding contract and you can be fined or even be forced to leave the premises. Should that happen, now you are looking for a new place and just lost all the time an energy and money on your flock. There are landlords out there who will let you rent. I know- my landlords have farm animals themselves and are happy for us to have animals too, as long as we are good tenants.
Avee82 says
You could get/build a mobile coop. I wouldn’t do anything that had the potential to get me evicted though. Maybe if you discussed the benefits to your landlord, they would relent. Since you move the coop around, it’s great for fertilizing the yard and bug control. I actually got my chickens to naturally rid my yard and small trees of Japanese Beetles. the eggs are a great benefit though!
Michelle says
I’m not sure it’s a good idea to hide chickens lol but they can be kept indoors. In the kitchen, extra bedroom, ideally a basement or garage. Make sure you get pullets and not straight run otherwise you will most likely end up with roosters. If you keep them indoors cleaning is daily instead of monthly, especially with 6. Maybe you could get the 6 but rehome 4 of them. 2 hens will still give you eggs but the clean up and noise will be less. You could let them roam the house if they wear diapers. Either disposable or clothe ones are sold online…cage them at night.
Lisa Goldmann says
Hey Mavis! There is a FB page called Animal Behavior Matters and they are going to be offering “Chicken Camp”. (Sorry I don’t know how to share the post with your page). They said the “sign-up” is coming soon!
Cindy says
We use coffee chaff from a local coffee roaster for our bedding…the chickens love it and best of all, it’s free 🙂
Teri Kruse says
What is coffee chaff like? I might look in to that option! Thanks for mentioning it
Marla says
Where did you get your coop (igloo) and how many hens can it hold? Thanks Mavis. We are definitely going to get chickens soon! 🙂 My boys cannot wait.
Mavis says
Omlet.com 🙂
Heather Massey says
We are just getting started need a little help with buying the right materials and chickens. What and where do u suggest we look? Thank you for all the info we have already begun getting scraps from a local store so very excited to raise chickens!
Mavis says
What city are you in?
julie says
I was wondering how Matilda was doing also… 🙂
Mavis says
Matilda died on Monday night. 🙁
Sherry says
so sorry 🙁
Courtney says
I only have three hens, but everyone always asks, “Don’t they smell? Aren’t they nasty?” I think most people have only encountered chickens on huge farms or driving behind a chicken truck with 700 chickens crammed into little cages. I can honestly say I spend more time scooping my cat’s litter box than I do cleaning my coop. Just fresh shavings every few weeks and I move my tractor to another part of the yard and we’re good to go. People also comment on how clean my chickens look??? I don’t wash them, but once again I think the mental image of those dirty white chickens crammed into tiny cages is burned into the minds of many people.
Grandma PattyB says
Love your comments on their upkeep. That helps a lot for one who has never had chickens. I want them, my HH is not convinced. My daughter wants them and so do her dogs (and not in a good way). She will have to figure out how to keep the girls safe from the dogs, especially the girl dog. She is fast and has a rap sheet.
Teri says
I found a 4×15′ dog run on Craigslist to use for mr run. I have Hounds, so no hope of training their prey drive away.
jubob says
we learned about making a disinfectant from vinegar and orange and lemon peels. you use 1 gallon vinegar and add your peelings, keeping them submerged in the vinegar. it takes 3 months to percalate and voila in the spring you have a clean smelling, bug and crud killing natural juice to spray down the coop. this is the first spring for our girls and we are trying it for the first time. but it smells good and if anyone is interested, we can let you know if it works.
sheryl says
jubob, please let us know how the natural disinfectant works for you.
Denise says
Would like to know exactly how you make that disinfectant with the vinegar, lemon peels etc…Thanks
nannette says
Hello. Just wondering how your disinfectant went?
Connie says
I use cedar toe in my chicken nest boxes. It’s just like using a cedar chest to repel moths. Cedar toe will repel mites or lice from the chickens and smells wonderful too ! You can get cedar toe in bales at feed stores and, although I don’t know for sure, you might be able to get it at gardening stores or home depot?
Renay says
I have 2 (used to have 4) chickens in Bellevue WA. I love them!
My girls have a coop house with lights but no heat (where I keep their water and food, and the nesting boxes and a bale of straw that I use for their nesting boxes and their food in safe bins). I went to Seattle Salvage and bought cute old Queen Anne windows for the house. The house is 4×8, the size of a sheet of plywood.
Outside the coop is the ‘covered patio’ where the girls can always be outside even if it is pouring. Chickens clean themselves by ‘dusting’ – they dig a dirt space and roll around in there getting the dirt in between all their feathers. This suffocates the bugs. A dry space facilitates this, since you can’t do it with mud. I recommend you give them this dry area. All I did was buy that wavy plastic (that every retiree has to park their RV under haha) and put it up over a portion of the coop. Easy to do. This space is about 4×8.
The open space is 8×8 which also has a little dog house (which was their old coop, before remodeling/expansion), which we call the ‘chalet, the girls European vacation’ where they also like to sit in when the weather is bad.
Love my chickens!
Nora says
Thanks so much for sharing this….helps me in figuring how and about when to clean up our coop once the 8 gals make it out in the coop. LOL. Ours are almost 4 weeks old now. growing so fast.
Jo says
So I havent had chickens since I was little. But I was wandering my way through pintrest once and came across someone who uses sand for their coop so that they can use like a big litter box scoop to clean it plus she used something called a poop hammock she had the instructions on her site. It was for a much larger coop though. I thought I would let you know to see if that may help the mud situation 🙂
BJ in Powhatan says
We have chickens and use paper shreddings and they go out to the compost pile one we clean out the chicken houses to go in the garden. Have all my friends send me their shreddings and it has become a community outpouring of recycling…and they then buy the eggs from me and we have more ladies joining in the recycling…works great…
sharon says
I know this sounds doumb but do you just scrap out the chicken coup to get out chicken fertilizer? also do you need to wait to use the fertilizer? I would love to know more info about this. Is thisthe only type of fertilizer that you use?
Laura at TenThingsFarm says
Chicken manure is generally ‘hot’ and needs a year to cure or it can burn your plants. We compost it for a year before we add it to our garden or orchard.
Mavis says
I shovel out the “fertilizer.” Our coop has dropping trays, so we simply slide out the trays toss the fertilizer on to the heap {I’ll post about this later}.
Kathy in Chicago says
Thank you! This was very enlightening!
jolie says
I am moving up to Portland, OR and would love to start out with a few chickens. I think I can do this with helpful tips from the natives, but I have one question that I haven’t seen. How do you care for them when you’re out of town? I don’t think I could afford to hire anyone, so is this a dilemma that I can somewhat easily solve, or should I just let go of the whole idea? Thanks so much.
sheryl says
With so many chicken, is your coop still big enough? We get snow/sleet in winters and some extremely wet weather sometimes in the other seasons. Don’t they all have to be able to fit inside at once?
Mavis says
There is actually a lot of room in there. I’ll have to try and get a picture some time and post it.
Sherry says
Hi Mavis. I’m having a problem with my chicken run after a rain. It gets pretty muddy and gives off a bad smell. I’ve read
where some people have used gravels, pine straw, pine shavings, etc. I heard cedar shavings were toxic to chickens,
most have said pine shavings were good, gravel is too hard on their feet and hay straw gets moldy after several rains.
I am so confused!
Would love your input on what to use.
BTW My chicken run is only 6 feet by 3 feet.
Mavis says
Hi Sherry, we use pine shavings and have never had a problem with them. 🙂
Mitch says
Hi Mavis,
This was very helpful. We’ve been inundated with snow for weeks here in New Jersey and our runs are turning into watery mud holes. It is soggy here, surrounded by wetlands. Can’t move the coops with all the snow and nowhere for it to drain. Based on what you’ve said, I’m going to try pine shavings, which we have been using exclusively in our coops. Appreciated your advice!
Mitch
nannette says
how did this work for you?
Renee says
I use wood pellets for my nesting boxes. I can get a 40 lb bag for $7. i get a container pour the pellets into in in a single or double layer., add water until just even with the pellets. . they will expand and not be wet. last a very long time before I have to clean out the nesting box. and the eggs just wipe clean. much cheaper than shavings.
patti says
What color hens laid the beautiful blue eggs? I have Americana’s+ usually get more of a light green…
Paulette says
I moved onto a small farm that has a 20′ x 25′ enclosed chicken coop. The space is great but it will take a lot of wood shavings. Do I need to conver the entire dirt floor with shavings? How thick? Do I clean out all the shavings periodically? Also, it has an attached enclosed run, it is 6′ x 10′. It is covered…do I put shavings in the run also?
Thanks for help and any suggestions. New to chicks
Heather says
Our chicken run is 10 x 10. We have 3 sides plus the top covered in a tarp. Our run is so muddy. When I step in the run the mud comes over my boots about 2 inches. I am afraid if I just add Pine shavings that they will soak up the liquid and then what? Do I need to rake out the old shavings and replace it? or do you just add more on top? I am not sure why it is a muddy mess but I am afraid my chickens will get bumble foot or parasites from the nasty water muddy yuck.
Heather says
Also what do you think of sand in the nesting boxes? I see people use sand and then use a cat litter scooper to scoop up the poop. Does anyone else do this? I am really trying to figure things out so my chickens are safe and healthy. Thank you.
Jaclyn says
Its summer here in Louisiana. We built our own coop. With a hen house and a medium area on the ground. The ground is a muddy mess. Whats the best way to clean it. I see you put shavings in the winter but in the summer what should i do? Should i just rake it? Still add a little shavings?