Everything you need to know to keep your coop deep clean, smelling good, and disinfected naturally with homemade coop cleaners, using commercial poultry house cleaners, using nesting pads and ways to keep your chickens clean and fresh which will make your coop and your chickens less attractive to parasites, rodents and predators.
- It is very important to keep your chicken coop clean and deodorized if you want to keep your chickens healthy chickens and get the best eggs.How to keep your hen house/chicken coop clean:
Wash the coop at least weekly to reduce chances of sickness, parasites, and feces build up.
- .Use coop deodorizers to reduce odors.
Move your coop often. Feces can cause sickness if coops are not moved within two months. It is best to move your coop weekly, at the least monthly. Moving your coops will also allow your birds access to fresh ground, grasses and insects.
- Clean out nest boxes as needed. Wash nest boxes with non toxic soap and hot water, let dry, then apply disinfectant, let dry, then put new bedding or nesting pads in. If you have roll out nest boxes, wash them out at least once a month.
- Pretreat roosts to prevent parasites-Wipe down roosts with Murphy Oil Soap and water to prevent mites and scaly leg mites.
Keep your coop free of mites, lice, and other parasites-Treat coops for parasites monthly
Disinfect your coop to kill germs and bacteria-Disinfect your chicken coop monthly with Virkon S
Keep your coop fresh smelling- Use Sweet PDZ mixed in with your bedding to make it last longer and smell better.
Keep your chickens clean-Bathe your chickens at least four times a year and dip them in a permethrin solution (1/16 cup of 10% permethrin to five gallons of water) or other poultry mite and lice treatments. This will make them less likely to attract parasites and gives you a better chance to inspect them for other unseen problems that could develop under the feathers. Be sure to trim your chickens feathers around the vent area (less chance for buildup=cleaner eggs and less chance for mites and bacterial infections) See Chicken Spa Days
Clean & dust coop doorways regularly-After cleaning doorways, put a light dusting of Food grade DE down in front of entrance ways weekly to help prevent scaly leg mites
Scoop feces from bedding/litter to make it last longer-An easy way to clean up feces from pine bedding, without using your hands is to use a good wet and dry vac which will scoop them right up or use a poop scooper or coop cleaning rake.
Scoop underneath roosts daily-Most the feces in your chicken coop will be under the roosts where your chickens sleep at night. Taking a few minutes to scoop this out and replace with fresh bedding will help to make coop cleaning days much easier and will keep your coop smelling fresher.
Get cleaner eggs-Use roll out nest boxes for cleaner eggs and nest boxes and less cleaning time. If you do not have roll out boxes you should inspect your nest boxes daily, remove eggs, and clean as needed.
Help wood floors last longer and make floor cleaning easier-Put linoleum down over wood floors, you can staple it down with a staple gun rather than glue it as you will need to replace it from time to time. I like to run non toxic silicone sealant along the edges so water does not get trapped under it and I also staple vinyl floor trim around the edges to prevent the chickens from pecking at or eating the silicone sealant.
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