Cleaning out the coop

[CrealCritter]

My son and I cleaned out the deep bedding in the layer coop. Glad it's only a once a year job. We shoveled the deep bedding into feed bags, loaded them into the veggie hauler and unloaded them at the head of the spring / fall garden. I threw a tarp over them so they don't get too wet. I'll spread the bags out in the garden and till it in as soon as weather permits. It was a good day to do this chore, only in the mid 30's outside, so no sweating.

We then swept the floor of the wood shop loaded saw dust / wood shaving into trash cans and spread them out onto the floor of the layers coop. It smells a lot better in their now and I'm sure the layers will enjoy new bedding.

It was a nasty manual labor job but im glad it finally done. Plus chicken poop deep bedding makes great garden fertilizer.

 

[sumi]

A few years ago I had over 100 chickens and a fairly large coop, so you can imagine the cleaning…. Someone we knew in the area wanted some chicken droppings for his garden, so he came and asked me if he can have some? I said sure, we can spare some! He'll just have to wait until I get round to shovelling it. He said no, he'll bring one of his workers to come collect it for him. A day or two later he came with a worker who cleaned out the coop for me, he took away all the droppings and PAID me for it Talk about "Thank you! Come again!"

 

[Beekissed]

I haven't cleaned out a coop in 6 yrs now. My DL just composts down in the coop~no smells, no flies~and I scoop out some compost each year to put around plants in the garden. No waiting for it to compost...it's black gold when it comes out of the coop.

Never fully cleaned out, some left behind to inoculate the new going in and it's just a continuous process of composting all year round.

 

[CrealCritter]

My coop has a cement floor. There was about 8" of deep bedding in there on top of the slab. We did run into a section that was frozen but it busted up easy enough with a pitch fork.

My first mistake as a newbie chicken guy was to put in a pipe with nipple waterers INSIDE the coop. Once I abandoned the inside nipple waterer for watering outside - things got a lot better. Ammonia smell is almost all gone now and humidity inside the coop is a lot better. It's taken almost 3 years to get the concrete slab dry... Chickens don't have cheeks and waste a lot of water when they try and drink from a over head nipple waterer. All that wet deep bedding was not a good combination at all.

I got the idea for inside nipple pipe waterer from BYC. Lots of positive talk about nipple waterers but no-one mentioned what a bad idea it is too have it inside the coop with deep bedding. Oh-well live and learn...

 

[Beekissed]

Wood shop saw dust and wood shaving and hay is all I have an abundance of for free. So it's wood shaving, saw dust and hay is what they get.

What kind of bedding do you use?

Mostly leaves, as those are free here. I gather many, many bags of leaves in our nearest town each fall, so I don't even have to rake and bag them. I have a few people I gather from and each of those old fellers bag up to 90 bags of leaves each season. The one mulches his first, which comes in handy for placing them in my mulch rings around the apple saplings.

I also mix in whatever else I have available~wood chips, a little hay, a dab of straw(I also get this free just by forking up what falls off the straw truck at my local feed store), twigs, and all the green matter I take out of the garden at the end of the season, lawn clippings from my son's lawn in town, any and all kitchen scraps that the dogs and chickens don't consume, and anything else that will compost.

Pics of some of the things that go into this coop and come out compost...

A general mix of materials allows more air into the mass and speeds composting...if you use all one material, with all one particle size, it slows composting down.

This is how hot that mass can get under the roosts if I get the moisture levels just right....it was around 20* this day of Dec. when I stuck this meat thermometer into the mass directly under the roosts. At roost level it's normally 10* warmer in the winter months than the outside temps. LOTS of large ventilation open at all times, particularly right next to this mass, to let fresh air in to carry the heat and moisture up past the birds and out the top.

This is what it looks like when it comes back OUT of the coop...light as a feather, no smell except of earthiness like good compost smells.

It makes it kind of fun to dispose of things in there and then receive garden goodness come spring and summer. I can mix this with potting mixes, side dress directly with it without fear of burning up my plants, and can even use it like a mulch for moisture control around the base of the plants.

 

[Hinotori]

You can come do mine next. Ive started bagging it when the ground has been just dry enough to get a wheelbarrow in. Mom has been begging me for bunch of bags. I took her some that she finally used last year. She had been sceptical until she finally tried a little bit in her pots.

Then she saw the results of my squash last year in the big raised planter that was a third chicken litter. Now she wants more

 

[CrealCritter]

I hardly ever check the layers at night but decided I would tonight. It's about 11 PM now i'm wondering if they ever sleep?

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

Our deep litter is pure Gold! We shovel it out and into the compost pile...where it sits for months to a year before it is scooped up....black, warm and full of grubs....for the garden. The chickens get any grubs to convert to eggs.

I don' turn the compost either. Just pile it up in the compost ring we made from fence wire.

 

[moxies_chickennuggets]

Sometimes I have to empty it if it floods and starts making ammonia. Otherwise, it sets.

 

[Hinotori]

I do deep litter. I have to shovel out some each year to keep the level lower. No smell. Mostly dry. I think the moisture level is at that perfect level to cook it quick. It breaks down very fast in there. New shavings don't last long. Worms in the bottom level do their job.