Chicken Coop- Litter Method

There are enough ideas and ways of having a clean chicken coop on Pinterest to fill an encyclopedia. And I have tried so many of them. Chicken poop is just not my thing. But I do love my feathery ladies! And eggs…. yes my eggs. Fresh eggs make me the very best cake! Scrambled, poached, sunny side…. yeah they are all over rated. Cake is where it’s at!

 

But that still leaves us with the poop problem. First year that I had chickens I tried the “litter” method. Sounds weird right? Well, I ran to Home Depot and bought six bags of sand. Supposedly the chickens would poop, the sand would dry out and you could use a giant litter scoop to sieve through the sand and clean it all out real easy.

Looks so pretty and clean right?

.

.

.

Fail. And sorta expensive. 😛

Definitely could have been my fault though. I had ducks as well that year. And ducks like water. Sand and water don’t work well when your trying to dry poop out. Instead I ended up with green mushy sand.

FYI ducks poop lots of green liquify stuff that sand can’t handle even if it is dry!

So eventually I just ended up putting straw in on top of the sand!

After cleaning all the sand and straw out later, I ended up just washing the whole thing out… which the ducks loved. I would put fresh straw in then after a week give them some more fresh, then after about 2 weeks I would empty all the straw and wash it out again.

This year we moved the coop off the cement block and to the other side of some bushes and added on. This time there is only dirt for the ground. It has made it quite convenient because we just rotertille it under every few weeks and put some fresh straw out in between. Gives us fresh dirt and less work. It’s been awesome!

So long story short, the sand might be a great idea if you have a better set up , or only do it under the roost. And no ducks. But ducks are just so adorable!

If you guys have any suggestions or ideas for keeping your coop clean let me know! I’d love some more ideas!