Mucky Muck Out Time

I must admit that cleaning up after two little bantams is a breeze after having such a large flock before! The ducks used to be the muckiest creatures, absolutely gorgeous to have around the garden and such fun to watch, but mucky all the same. If it wasn’t the inevitable mud bath next to their ponds it was their house needing cleaning out twice a week as they were little poop machines…

Cleaning Out Larger Flocks

With larger flocks I found it easiest to buy a large bale of aubiouse each month, some straw for nest boxes and a tub of stablefresh dry disinfectant as well as animal safe cleaning fluid. Muck out day involved getting all the old aubiouse onto the compost heap, a good scrub with the cleaning fluid and a long handled cleaning brush, sprinkle the stablefresh throughout then in with the clean aubiouse in the sleeping area (ducks) and under the perches (chooks) as well as clean straw for them to lay in. It would take 30 mins and that was before I started on freshening up ponds and cleaning any other mucky areas!

Cleaning Out Smaller Flocks

Cleaning up after these two though is a breeze! We have newspaper under the perches and this just needs taking out once a week as two little girls really don’t make that much mess, a quick spritz to clean and back in with some new paper. These little ladies also are good with no nest box sleeping so we are luckily not having to change the straw very often for them either – although they still aren’t in lay I remain hopeful we will soon wake up to one of them having left us an eggy surprise in there.

I still have a large tub of stablefresh and although we don’t need this in the coop now I do find it useful to use in the run area. It doesn’t harm the grass so we give the whole run a sprinkle over with the hose then lightly dust over with stablefresh. This breaks down any poop and helps keep the are smelling fresh and free from flies when the weather gets warmer. I know others with small flocks daily poop pick which is also a great way to keep a small grass run clean – I have to admit though with little one to run after all day (and all those nappies to change) I can’t face poop picking come lock up time!

If you need to stock up on poultry supplies and cleaning products we’ve recently update our equipment section where you can find cleaning fluid and bedding all delivered for your girls.

New Chicken’s Names

We finally have names for the little ladies thanks to our followers on our Facebook Page. They are now called Lightning and Spitfire. Hopefully they will soon have two new ladies to cluck about with who will be called Tiny and Small. Thanks again for all the name suggestions we were given!