How to Clean a Chicken Coop

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Last week, just before I got the gumption to clean up my backyard, I cleaned up the chicken's backyard. Because again ... apparently their backyard had been struck by looters. And really weird looters. The kind who don't take anything, they just make everything messy, probably jump around in their underwear for a while, and then leave.

The chickens don't care either way. Right here they were actually talking about the mess in a conversation that went something like this:

"Hey Mabel, have you noticed the mess?"

"Not really Cheez Whiz, things look fine to me. Wait! Unless you were talking about Josephine's new tail feather. In which case, R I D I C U L O U S."

"Hey do you mind if I peck at your eyeball?"

"Not at all."

Having decided I couldn't leave a clean up decision to a group of animals that peck at each other's eyeballs and look straight at you while they poop in their water, I took it upon myself to decide it was time for the chicken coop's Spring Clean Up.

To fool myself into thinking this job was going to be a fun job, I dragged out my fun pants.

Even though chickens love dirt, there's a distinction between dirt and dirty. Dirt is good for chickens, they bathe in it to cool down and get rid of mites.

Poopy dirty is bad. Dirty chicken water, roosting areas and nesting boxes can lead to disease, respiratory problems for the hens and neighbours throwing rotten goldfish at you. Or whatever stinkfest they can chuck at you in a friendly "Your coop is gross and you'd better clean it up" gesture.

IF YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE CHICKENS YOU HAVE TO DO A SPRING CLEANING

The first thing I did was pull down the plexiglass I had covering the coop to keep the winter wind and snow out. I find the best way to do this is to walk in a very unnatural, knock-kneed way. Yes it's definitely best to do it that way.

This is the time to add all that winter poop and straw to the composter. Now that the weather is a bit warmer, it'll turn into compost in no time just by adding a bit of water to it.

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I hot compost my straw and chicken manure into good, useable compost in less than 30 days just by adding a bit of water to it. It's good shit.

At least twice a year I completely scrub and bleach my waterers, then add a splash of cider vinegar to them when I fill them up again. I'm not totally sure of why I do this, but rumour has it it's good for the chickens. I have no proof of this other than reading crap on the Internet. If you don't want to use bleach just disinfect with white vinegar instead.