How do I keep my chickens clean?
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Chickens | 200 comments
Chickens are not naturally clean creatures, unlike the story book ones. Do you remember them? Clean living hens, wearing spotted scarves and venturing out to the market with a basket hooked over a wing and a clutch of chicks close by.
Real life chickens will foul their chicken house and quite often foul the nesting box. The only chicken that I have known to actively ‘clean’ her house was Mrs Boss. When the guinea fowl keets hatched she pulled all the hay from her nest out of their house in the ark. The more clean hay and woodchips I added the more she pushed them into their run. After a couple of weeks, I admitted defeat. The keets slept under Mrs Boss’ wings, on bare boards. I could never understand why she did this.
If chickens are not cleaned out regularly their droppings can harbour and spread disease. Droppings in the nesting box can foul the eggs. Remove any droppings immediately from the nesting box when you see them.
There is also the question of chicken mites. In warmer weather, mites can breed like wildfire in a house that is not treated regularly. They lay their eggs in dark nooks and crannies in the house and are at their most active at night. They bite the chickens and these bites can become infected.
An imaginative Estate Agent might describe our hen house as,
“A Canadian style two storey lodge. Lower floor family room with traditional wooden slatted staircase leading to spacious communal bedroom for 8 plus with half mansard ceiling and door to cosy penthouse nesting box.”
It gets a good cleanout once a week. And a top to toe super valet and repair in the Spring and Autumn.
If you are canny, the weekly cleanout for an average sized house (ours is designed to accommodate 6-8 Maran hens) takes about twenty minutes, often it is completed in ten.
The trick to quick and easy cleaning is to store everything that you might need within a few feet of the chicken house. We keep our chicken consumables in two large barrels in the run. One holds the bedding the other contains sprays, powders, oyster shells, grit and everything that a chicken keeper might need. These storage bins are also popular with the flock as they have another vantage point on which to stand and observe the world.
Our chicken feed is stored in the boot of Danny’s car and in a large aluminium grain store in the garden. Along with the wild bird and Min Pin food.
Generally I pull on my chicken cleaning gloves at midday when the flock are out an about in the run. Initially I spray the inside of the house with a decent anti mite spray. I close the door to the house as I am not sure how safe the spray is for the flock (although it is marked suitable for an aviary with residents). While the spray wafts through the house I collect all the stuff that I need from the barrels. woodchips, fresh hay and mite powder.
The old woodchips, hay and droppings are swept into the chicken run dustpan and go into their bucket (this was sold to me as a nappy bucket and has a lid). This lid is handy as the bucket can sit happily inside the run until it is full.
Once all debris has been removed, I spread wood chips on the floor of the house. These are great as they absorb moisture and make the chicken cleaning process much easier. They are available in enormous chunky packs. and a pack lasts for months. I lay a layer of woodchips in the nesting box topped with a thickish layer of hay. My mum recommended hay for the nests as mites can breed easily in the hollow strands of straw. The hens fashion the hay into nests very quickly, even if they are off lay.
Once fresh chips and hay have been spread, I return to the barrels for oyster shells and grit. I used to put these in a nifty container in the run, now I cast them just before I open the gates to get out. The flock dives for these and before they have discovered that they are not deluxe grain mix I am the other side of the wire. Poultry need grit. Ours find this in the back wall of the run. If yours don’t have access to a wall don’t forget to provide them with grit, if you are feeding them seeds and corn as it essential for breaking down the husks in their gullets.
Chickens are fine on woodchips alone and I have seen many happy hen houses that just have newspaper spread on the floor. Once you find an effective way to keep your chickens clean that suits you, use it on a weekly basis. You and your chickens will bloom.
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Hello Maria
That’s good news.
Hi Jan
Poor you. Well done for scotching them.
Hi. I have just found this website and think its great. I too am having problems with red mite. Yesterday I cleaned and sprayed every nook and cranny (I thought) with poultry shield. Today I moved the chooks so I could paint the henhouse with wood preservative and the little blighters made a run for it from under the roof. They didnt make it!!
Phew! All sorted out!
I’ve become obsessed with checking my skin since cleaning out the red mites from the chicken house! Like so many of you, I ran gingerly back to the house and put my clothes straight in the washing machine. But now find myself days after still picking them off my skin (even after several showers/baths etc.) I’ve seen them on the sofa (especially at night) and I can’t get rid of that spidery feeling all over me – YUK! Stop the itching and constant scanning! Anyway, at least the chickens are lovely and clean, but I am actually looking forward to a PROPER winter with snow as well as frost so that it can kill or at least cut down the numbers of the disgusting things altogether from the chicken arc!
Arghhhh! There’s one! Got it! Squashed it on my fingernail! Yeuchhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! Now since I have told my husband about it, he’s obsessing about them too! Oh Joy!
Hi am new to this site (been enjoying having a read through).
We became the proud owners of 8 “rescued” hens a couple of months ago. No real details about their life before they came to us, apart from knowing they’d been neglected badly before being dumped at a chicken breeder friends. As he didn’t really want them & we had a hen-house & run awaiting hens we said we’d take them on (bit foolish of us as we didn’t know their history but it just didn’t seem right for them to be dispatched as they were still young). Our friend treated them for various nasties (wormed them, treated them for lice & mites & even inoculated them for us – he said as he had several of his own who needed their inoculations it was really no trouble or extra expense to do ours), sorted out their feet (most had compacted, concrete-like mud encasing their feet), got them used to perching (something they hadn’t been able to do properly due to their feet) & generally cleaned them up & got them on the road to recovery.
They’ve settled in well, though like many here we’ve had red mite problems. 2 hens in particular were v shocked & distressed when they came to us though they were both v different in how they showed it – 1 was v aggressive, but the other was v withdrawn & quiet. Both seem to have settled well – the withdrawn hen seems much happier, has at last started to regrow all her lost feathers (we had visions of having to have her in little jumpers once the colder weather got here) & in the last fortnight has finally started laying the odd egg. The aggressive 1 has clamed down a lot though now they all seem to be approaching their autumn moult she’s starting to get a bit stroppy again.
WRT red mite we’ve hit the hen house hard with disinfectant weekly & been dusting hen house & hens with DE (as well as mixing some into their dust baths). Touch wood we seem to be on top of the problem now, but me being paranoid & a bit neurotic about red mite I’m checking for it twice a day (by wiping along the underside of perches with a white cloth – any red smears are squidged mites). Have also stopped using straw as a bedding/nesting material & now using wood shavings/chips & hay.
Something else to bear in mind is the type of roofing you have – if you have roofing felt then the red mite have somewhere inaccessible to sleep/live/breed (in the narrow space between the felt & the roof), so unless you’re happy to remove the felt regularly to get to them it’s a good idea to use another form of roofing.
Steve Frontline isn’t licensed for use on poultry, though I have heard that some people swear by using the weakest/lowest dose (so puppy/kitten doses I would assume). Apparently there has to be a period of egg withdrawal (where you can’t sell or eat the eggs) but I can’t seem to find any info as to how long for or many details about using Frontline…
Would it be possible to use frontline on chickens,as you would a cat or dog, would be so much easier
Hi
I have a cockerel who is over-protective of his girls. Every time the girls run to me he runs at me, jumping at my leg and it hurts! He is a small bantum and very determined.
Does anyone have any ideas of how to stop him being so aggresive?
Thanks.
Hi there
I am new to the site and have been reading this thread with great interest. I am now panicking about mites!
We are due to pick up 6 ex-battery hens next weekend and will keep them in a barn that the previous house owner kept chickens in (our landlords father lived here before us).
I am a little concerned because the landlord, a farmer who keeps chickens too has said that we don’t need to clean out the barn unless we are between batches of chickens and that the straw and muck will naturally break down so cleaning out the straw is not a problem.
The barn is really big and still covered in muck which is really old. I am going to clean it out and disinfect it, but once I have made it clean and prepared it, how do I keep a barn this big clean and mite free without spending a fortune on straw or shavings?
Hi Everyone,
I have heard that Red mites will kill chickens, but with any animal anythng that is old or infirmed usually are ones that are affected by any parasite.
Like you Shirley I am suffering with my first infestation of mites. To put a downer on it even more I found out from a poultry vet friend of mine that red mites can live away from birds for up to 36 WEEKS!!!!
I have a wooden duck house that is very easy to clean as two side come off of it and enable me to get into all those hard to reach places!!!
At present a regular cleaning session, plenty of mite powder and spray is keeping the horrid little things under control but isn’t knocking them all on the head. I am going to try the ash thing aswell.
Let me know if anyone finds the miracle cure!!!
Martine
Hi,
We have had our first infestation of mites. We found one of our chickens very ill and she later died. Can mites cause this? We are very annoyed at getting mites as we were told when we bought the house that the wood was treated and that we wouldn’t get mites, obviously it was a selling pitch.
I have read lot of the comments on mites so know what to do not to get rid of them, and keep them away. But has anyone heard of chickens dying from mite bites?
Thanks
Hi Shirley
I’ve not heard about a chicken dying of mites.
The mites come in with the wild birds. Our hen house is wooden but as long as I’m lavish with the mite powder when I clean them out each week they are not a problem. I’m also going to try MuleMarm’s idea of the wood ash.