How often...

[Kathleen in WI]

do you clean your goat barn/stalls, chicken coop, etc.? My husband seems obsessed with a clean barn, which I guess is a good thing. But it seems like he is always hauling out the old bedding and putting in new. We now have a huge pile of old straw/bedding next to the corral.

So I am curious, how much is enough?

[Pony]

Sounds like he may be denying your animals the chance to challenge their immune systems.

In the Winter, we let it pile up to keep the animals warmer. Deep bedding is lovely, and really smells nice - like compost. Summertime, we get out there when things get rank, but as they spend less time inside when the weather is warm, it's still a month or two before we clear it out.

[Kathleen in WI]

That was sort of my though. Every couple of months. he is just obsessive about it. he will even sweep the drive when he sees goat poo. lol I make fun of him and tell him, "This is a farm, there will be poo!"

We did leave it all winter because I told him that the breakdown of it will help keep the barn warm (like hot compost). I need to tell him to chill out with the cleaning. Hadn't thought about it affecting their immune systems.

[Alice In TX/MO]

When it needs it. Couple of times a year.

[madness]

We are pretty much like Pony. Let it go all winter and the when it warms we much the whole thing out. During the summer, it's usually every month with our heat. But it all depends on smell and "squishiness" - not by the calendar.

[Kathleen in WI]

He insists it smells like pee. I don't notice it. Obviously, if it is that soggy in there that there is a urine smell, it needs to be cleaned, but I just don't think it gets that bad in a week. I only have 7 goats (one baby) in 3 stalls that are quite big. But he smells it...

[Moboiku]

I do the same as Pony. I don't have a barn for my sheep/goats. We have a horse run-in type shelter that is missing its east and west walls so is basically a roof and a back wall. I put in hay walls (hay bales sandwiched between cattle panels) this winter to give them east/west protection from wind. But it is outside, the floor is dirt and no, I won't be cleaning it out. They spend the majority of their time out in the pasture anyway.

The chicken coop….I do the deep bedding method. Cleaning it out and replacing the bedding too often costs you a small fortune in replacement bedding plus, as you noted, you end up with a big pile of the used bedding. When I clean my coop, I dump the contents directly on the veggie garden. Once a year it gets tilled in. The rest of the time it acts as mulch.

Every morning I toss a handful of BOSS in on the top of the bedding. This encourages them to get in there and scratch through, making sure they don't miss a single seed, and in doing so, they turn over the bedding every morning. I do that until even turned over, the bedding is saturated with poop and then I add another bale for them to spread out. That stays clean and turned over for another few weeks and then I repeat again. When the entire bedding layer is 8-10" deep and has been turned over until even the top layer is saturated, then I know it is time to clean it out and start over.

I don't like poop on the driveway either. But that's because the driveway doesn't need to be fertilized and the areas where stuff is growing does.

[Awnry Abe]

Goats: I'll do it sooner than later if a group of animals comes down with the runs. We are just in the middle of the washy green grass season here, so it is begging for a clean out. Otherwise, it is deep bed in winter and no bed in summer.

Coop: it gets the first cleaning of the year in April and the last in October. One or two more in the summer, usually coinciding with a mite infestation.

[V-NH]

I follow a quarterly cleaning schedule for all of my livestock. I use deep bedding all the time, but every 3 months I completely strip it down to nothing and sanitize everything. It usually takes me a good eight hour day to do that. Other than those quarterly cleanings, I do some minor spot cleaning every couple of weeks if I see anything that looks gross. Usually I spend 10-15 minutes a month doing that.

[Frosted Mini's]

Usually about twice a year. Other than that, I just keep adding more straw on top. If he is really sensitive to the smell, maybe try using shavings like pine or cedar. They can help absorb and hide smells pretty nicely.

[where I want to]

My shed gets cleaned daily when the weather's bad because they are in there a lot. Usually at least once a week during better weather. But I do kind of flip the straw, when I use that, to see if it's really wet at the bottom- if not some scattered pellets don't bother me and I let it go longer.

[motdaugrnds]

I clean my barn every spring and that bedding goes in my compost pile. The floor of my barn is soil; so I always throw seed all over it and the chickens scratch it all up and the sunshine thru the summer months cleans it all out well. (Every 3-5 yrs I take part of the soil floor out with the bedding and spread a layer of agricultural lime all over that barn floor. It is good for deterring bugs and stays cool during the summer.)
After a few days, I start letting the summer bedding build so as to create a nice amount for winter bedding.

My chicken house is quite different in that I keep a dirt floor. Each spring I spray it all down with diluted chlorix, washing all roosting areas and keeping the fowl out for about a week. All bedding from the winter is taken to the compost pile and a light layer of agricultural lime is spread on the soil. (This year I'm adding about 3-5 inches of this agricultural lime in the chicken "pen" as it stays put, does not permit worms/bugs to live in it, water runs off it well and the fowl love to "feather dust" in it.)

[mammabooh]

I do deep bedding in winter and no bedding in summer. We have a 100-year-old barn with a dirt floor in the goat area. That floor is packed hard, so I sweep up the berries every day during the summer. I keep a little pile of straw on the floor and that is where they pee. I move the pile around so that one area doesn't get saturated. Usually, though, they are outside most of the day and don't pee in the barn all that much.

I must also add that their area in the barn has elevated platforms so they don't have to sleep on the floor if they don't want to.

[wintrrwolf]

I cleaned my new chicken house out at the beginning of this month of all the winter stuff and laid out a layer of pine pellets my chicken house hasn't got that ammonia odor yet and its been 3 weeks.
Since we have been having LOTS of rain I haven't cleaned out the doe's inside room the deep bedding keeps them way up out of any possible flooding. IF or when I get any stinky odor I sprinkle on a light layer of stall eze and a light layer of straw/wasted hay/pine pellets. After we get done with all this rain called for next week I will dig in and clean it all out.