Making your Henhouses Easy to Clean

Cleaning your chickens coops is a necessary but usually unpleasant job. By building great easy to use henhouses and choosing the right materials, you will make cleaning less of a chore.

Three most important things to make things easier are
-the right surface materials inside the poultry coops
-easy access to the inside of the henhouses
-good easy to move bedding

Surface Materials

By using waterproof and sealable walls and/or floors in your poultry coops you will make it easier for the surfaces to repel manure, water and even coccidia and bacteria that can cause diseases in your chickens.

We use inexpensive linoleum for our brooders and henhouses floor. Other poultry coops walls may be painted with exterior water-proof paints. We have used basement waterproofing paint too with great success. It makes pressure washing easier and prevents coccidiosis being harbored in the henhouses walls. If you can caulk all joins between poultry coops walls and floor, that will keep the dirt out too.

Easy access

By having the chickens coops ceiling tall enough you can stand up properly, your back will be better for it.

Have nice wide doorways for your henhouses so you can get a wheel barrow close. If you can build the henhouses raised up, make sure it is higher than a wheelbarrow then it will fall into the barrow with very little effort. We find a light snow shovel perfect for cleaning the chickens coops.

Make access to the poultry coops easy by having removable roosts, nest boxes, feeders and waterers. Make the chickens coops space nice and open for cleaning. You can use carabiners, hooks and chains to hold feeders, waterers and roosts, or even hinge the roosts so they fold up.

Good easy to use bedding

For your chickens coops, pine shavings the best as the chickens can turn them over and that helps keep the shavings dry and odour free. The shavings don't mat or feel as heavy as the longer-fibred straw. Straw absorbs a lot of water and the long fibres pack and weave together and make for a heavy shovel or fork full to lift out of the poultry coops.

Check out these great henhouses plans for other ideas to make cleaning way easier!

Tags: henhouses, henhouse, poultry coops, chickens coops, chicken coops