My sister has a great system for her chickens and garden. Her coop is built right next to a "double" garden plot. The plot is divided in half and completely fenced. Each summer, one half is available for the chickens to roam and scratch, while the other is her vegetable garden. Each fall, after harvest is done, she switches sides. She roams the streets with her trailer and collects hundreds of bags of raked leaves, dumps them in with the chickens, and they spend the next year enjoying the bugs and worms the leaves attract. The chicken poop and leaves turn into wonderful compost and nary a weed survives their pecking. She is lucky enough to be in the country, so she can get away with this plan. She has had repeated challenges with predators, and spent more money on reinforcing vents and fences than I'm sure her chickens are worth. However, she's not trying to make it a money saving or making venture. Chickens can be wonderful, but they do require constant vigilance. Martha

beeliz, what exactly did you use? farmwife, mites are an external parasite that most birds have a few of here and there most of the time. They are able to keep them under control by dustbathing and preening, and by being healthy. Mites and worms are carried in by wild birds, are already in the ground (earthworms can be a source of roundworms), can be tracked in from the dirt on peoples' shoes, etc. There really isn't any way to completely eliminate the possibility of parasites. A mite outbreak can occur when the natural checks and balances are upset for some reason, or when the bird is suffering an illness and opportunistic things like mites explode out of control. All you can do is to keep your birds as healthy as possible, provide plenty of opportunity for dustbaths and keep their living quarters clean. When outbreaks occur you need to treat ALL the birds, their living quarters--everything. I've got instructions on the various methods here on my chicken info site: http://home.earthlink.net/~velvetsparrow/VSChickHealth.htm To clean the coop, I also got myself a little portable, hand-held steam cleaner made by Scunci, like this one: http://www.scunci-steam-cleaner.com/ I take it right out into the coop and use it to blast steam into the nooks and crannies of the coop, nests, etc. It doesn't soak the wood and make a mess, plus it softens and blasts away any stuck-on chicken poop where mites could hide. Steam is non-toxic and mites can't build a resistance to it like they can to poisons. :) I'm really happy with the results I get from the thing. YOU CAN'T STOP THERE, THOUGH--I follow the steam cleaning up with either the Adams spray or the powdered Sevin, although if I use Sevin I have to wait a day for the coop to thoroughly dry out, just to be safe. If you don't follow up with some kind of mite treatment, likely you'll just have more mites in a week or two, since you can't steam clean chickens! Velvet ~:>

Upon making an Automatic Chicken Coop Door for our coop we researched many different ideas. After building well over five different prototypes we came up with one that we set on our coop and even lured the predators in to see how it held up against them. Over two years later and the door still separate the chickens from what is lurking outside. Also it lets them out at 6AM so I don't have to get up on the weekends. My family enjoys not having to come how early in the evenings to put the girls up since the door locks them all up for the evening. Here is a link to a video of predators trying to get into our coop. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b43RPCPhMmM In the past year we have built many of these same doors and sold them on our site but still making the door as simple as possible to install. The average person can install it in a matter of 15 minutes. We have even made an installation video that is on our site. We have never had a complaint about any predators getting through our doors. Now that doesn't sound like that big of a deal until, I tell you that our doors are sold all over the world. US, Canada, Mexico, Australia, Czech Republic, Italy ect. We take our time creating these doors and never try to save a few pennies, we used the most expensive glues longer staples, and master carpenters. We even linseed oil our doors to keep the door from swelling in any of the weather conditions that it may come against. We have even created a small trim kit piece we send free with every one of our doors to help benefit our customers. Here is a link to our installation video. http://www.youtube.com/user/AutomaticChickenCoop#p/u/9/DVLJQqaZ6wg Our door model we created is made with Model D20 Drapery motor. This means unlike most automatic doors it needs no counter weight so this means no unnecessary counter weight maxing out the weight limit on the door or causing the door lines to get tangled up and jam the door. If you would like to check it out our site is http://www.AutomaticChickenCoopDoor.com Jeremy Smith Automatic Chicken Coop Door Here is a link that might be useful: Automatic Chicken Coop Door

My chickens and coop don't smell, even if you stick your head in the coop. Any conscientious pet owner takes regular care of their pets' needs, including cleaning up after them. Folks who let dog poop accumulate for long periods around their yards or cat boxes left uncleaned have homes or yards with bad smells. Same with chickens. It is people who totally neglect their chickens or keep more chickens than their space can handle that have "smelly" coops or chickens. Treat them well like your other pets, and they won't be smelly. If you let chickens free range, make sure you set up your yard so they stay off of patios, porches, and furniture. If they poop on that, it can get unsanitary and you'll be doing a lot of hosing down of the surfaces. Baby chicks raised in the house could potentially be smelly if you don't change the bedding a couple of times a day. They also make a lot of dust in the house. I usually clean under the roosts most days in my coop since that is where the majority of the droppings end up, but have let it go as long as a week with no real noticeable smell from the outside of the coop. Typically, I only clean the rest of the coop really thoroughly every few months. If chickens will be confined to a coop for a long cold snowy winter, an owner will need to make it extra big for them to have lots of room while they are shut in in order for them to have healthy conditions. I would recommend maybe doing more research to support your case if your husband isn't on board with chickens. www.backyardchickens.com is a really good online resource to start with where you can get all sorts of chicken questions answered. There is a large community of chicken keepers there, both rural and suburban. Here is a link that might be useful: Backyardchickens.com