My big coop cleaning mistake for two whole years

I used to scrub the whole thing with a hose and bleach water every single weekend, thinking I was being super clean. Then my vet friend saw my setup and said I was stripping all the good microbes and making my girls more prone to illness. Now I just spot clean and do a deep clean twice a year. What's your cleaning routine like?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_nancy9d ago

And once I stopped the bleach, the dust baths actually started working again like they should.

ivanl181mo ago

Totally get this, I did the same thing for ages. I was obsessed with making everything smell like a hospital, thought that meant it was clean. My turning point was reading about the chicken's own microbiome, like how they need some of their own good bugs to stay healthy. I switched to just scraping the worst of the poop off the roosts every morning with a putty knife, and I do a full coop cleanout maybe three times a year now. Honestly, my flock has never been healthier since I stopped trying to sterilize their whole world.

wilson.anthony1mo ago

Feel that, I used to scrub my coop like a crime scene (which, looking back, it kind of was).