Did your neighborhood or city just approve the keeping of backyard chickens and you’re terrified the entire county will now smell like a barnyard? Let me share the realities of chicken keeping and why you won’t smell anything if your neighbor has a few laying hens. I’ll give you the honest truth from my experience and from visiting the coops of others, even those who do not use any natural smell-reduction techniques or products. Do backyard chickens stink? I promise 4 to 6 hens do not reek and you will not be able to smell them from your yard!
Chickens Smell and You Can’t Convince Me Otherwise
Chickens do poop. They actually produce two kinds of droppings, each with its own smell. Their regular bird-poop-like droppings are oval-ish in appearance and are a mix of green-brown and white in color. They create these once or twice per hour and these have very little smell. You would need to hold it up to your nose to smell the faint ammonia contained in the white portion of the dropping.
The second type of dropping chickens produce is cecal poop. This oily, liquid poo may look like diarrhea but it is actually the waste product coming from a different gland as a result of the digestion of fats. Cecal poop does have a true odor and can be smelled when it is within 6 feet of your nose. Luckily hens only produce cecal droppings a couple times per day and no more than 1 Tablespoon at a time.
Sunlight & Weather Break Down Chicken Droppings Very Quickly
The smell of all these types of chicken poops dissipates quickly, especially if exposed to the naturally disinfecting UV rays of sunlight. Poops that fall onto wood chip mulch, straw or the ground also tend to dry out rapidly with any smell evaporating fast. This is NOT the case on large factory farms where long barns hold twenty thousand chickens who are all pooping in an enclosed space. These chicken barns are well known for their horrible smell. You may have even smelled their bagged droppings which are sold as garden fertilizer. My large flock has never been able to produce anything near the odor that I’ve smelled in those chicken fertilizer bags. Sunlight and open air just do not allow such noxious smells to accumulate.
Factory Farm Chickens DO Smell horribly!
Huge factory farms are gross and highly odorous. Birds are crowded together and we have all heard how atrocious the smells are. If you have ever owned a pet you know that one pet can be clean and well-managed but thousands of those animals together would have a significant smell. The same is true of chickens. A handful backyard hens with a coop exposed to fresh air and sunshine are very different than a fully enclosed barn holding multiple thousands. Rain, breezes, and UV rays all combine to break down poops from a few hens quickly. This is also why the woods and parks near you do not reek of squirrel, bird, owl, fox, raccoon and opossum scat. The elements break it all down and fresh air whisks the smell away as it composts back into the soil.
What Does a Backyard Chicken Coop Actually Smell Like?
I’ll use my most descriptive writing to describe this over the internet. A small coop holding 6 birds who have any kind of litter such as straw, mulch, sand or exposed ground will have a different smell depending on your distance from it. If you stick your head into the coop, within two feet of any droppings you will smell the cat poop-like smell of cecal droppings and the faint ammonia smell from the white part of regular droppings. This smell is at worst the same level of smell as being within a foot or two of a cat litter box that has been used that day. (Remember, you must have your head in the coop within 24 inches of any poops to smell this cat litter box level of smell.)
What Does It Smell Like When You’re Near a Chicken Coop?
If you back away from the coop even just one foot, you’ll mostly smell the earthiness of whatever litter is being used. It may smell like straw, which is dry grassy-sweet, or mulch, which is earthy-woody. You will be able to detect the scent of a very fresh nearby cecal poop but not one that has dried (the cecal poops will only have a smell for about 30 minutes). It will become harder to smell the faint ammonia of the regular droppings if your head is outside of the coop. Once you are standing 3 to 6 feet away from the coop you will smell almost nothing. Your nose will have to hunt for any faint wafting poop smell because the smell of straw, mulch or earth is mingling with the scent of grass, nearby plants and whatever else is on the breeze. Ten to twelve feet away from the coop you can draw in huge breaths, trying to catch a whiff of the chickens, and will be hard pressed to pick up on anything. Most cities will require your neighbor’s coop to be fifteen or twenty five feet from your home. This is because the smell of poop from a flock of 12 or less is so faint, it just cannot carry that far. If you have a neighbor with one large breed dog who is pooping in their back yard, you are already dealing with worse smell than what a chicken coop of 6 hens can produce.
What if My Neighbors Don’t Do Anything to Stop the Smells?
What I described above is how a coop smells when NOTHING is done for odor control aside from there being straw or mulch on the floor of the coop. Chances are your town only allows suburban homes to keep 6 or less laying hens. If your neighbors use any odor reducing practices or products, it will be difficult to smell anything even when standing at the coop.
How Can I Encourage The Use of Odor Reducing Products?
Sometimes all you have to do is ask! If your neighbors are new to chicken keeping they may not know that odor controlling products, like Sweet PDZ Horse Stall Refresher exist and that Amazon can deliver it to their door. Sweet PDZ is granular zeolite, a harmless natural mineral that absorbs odor incredibly well. When sprinkled on fresh chicken poops – even cecal poops – it drops the smell to zero. Zeolite is garden safe and actually good for garden soil aeration! Chicken poops with zeolite (Sweet PDZ) on them can still be composted and used as garden fertilizer. (Affiliate links.)
How Do I Talk to My Neighbors About This?
It is okay to be honest about your fears! You can say or message something like “I am unfamiliar with chickens and a little afraid of the smell they might create if you keep them. I know you are legally allowed to have them but I was wondering if I could request that an odor control product like Sweet PDZ be used on their poops to keep the smells minimal?” Feel free to link them to the product on Amazon, Tractor Supply or this page so they can learn about it. (Seriously, it is AWESOME and truly does drop chicken smells to absolutely nothing!)
My Own Coop is Under Constant Scrutiny
My husband is not a fan of livestock. He has never fallen in love with chicken keeping. I actually live with a picky ‘neighbor’ who will complain about anything and everything amiss! How do I keep the peace and our yard fully odor free? Sweet PDZ. I go through a bag about every 6 to 8 weeks.
My coop’s lack of stink is often commented on by visitors. They are surprised to enter the coop and discover that it doesn’t smell like poop AT ALL, even though they can see chicken droppings on the mulch. (We use the deep litter method with wood chip mulch.) It does have an earthy, woody, garden-soil-and-grain plus feathers kind of smell in the coop but it is not stinky. It is a neutral, outside kind of smell that is much closer to “dusty old books” if a fragrance name was required.
If you have ever lived with one cat litter box in the house, you have already endured much worse and more persistent stink than what a half dozen backyard hens in a coop will smell like! Chickens truly do not stink that much.
Remember, Food is Coming Out of That Coop
No one wants to eat dirty eggs from a filthy coop and especially not the chicken owners! They already have every incentive to keep the chicken coop clean and odor-free. Poop covered eggs are gross so you can expect your neighbors will already be doing everything they can to ensure their family’s own food safety.
Don’t Overlook the Food Security Provided
Grocery stores seem to run out of eggs every time there is a large storm or any kind of hiccup in society that upsets the public. Having neighbors who keep chickens can be incredibly handy during egg shortage events. Even if there are no egg shortages, you may enjoy having a place to send your fruit & vegetable scraps to be turned into eggs instead of throwing out compostable food.
And Don’t Overlook the Added Property Value, Either!
Covid lockdowns in 2020 left people painfully aware that supply chain disruptions can be a serious issue. Interest in backyard food production is skyrocketing, with small scale chicken and quail keeping exploding. If you are lucky enough to live in an area that allows backyard hens, your property value could remain higher even if you don’t keep chickens yourself. My country neighborhood has two nearby subdivisions where chickens are forbidden. Houses do not sell for top dollar there while homes listed on my chicken-friendly road sell much more quickly…and every sale since 2020 seems to be preceded by the interested buyers persistently confirming that they are allowed to keep chickens. (I even had one neighbor ask if I would free range my hens in our front yard when they were expecting showings so potential buyers would see them!) When it is time to sell your home, be sure to mention that laying hens are allowed.
I Hope this Gives you Peace
I sincerely hope this article has brought you comfort and assured you that a small number of backyard chickens do not stink. If droppings somehow accumulate, there are products that can reduce the smell instantly. None of us want to live anywhere near the acrid-smelling, huge, filthy commercial chicken facilities. I own and maintain a coop that can house up to 40 chickens and I wholeheartedly assure you that the smells chickens create are manageable with very minimal care, mostly because they break down so quickly in sunlight and weather. Cat litter boxes truly are so much worse than backyard chicken coops. I think you will be surprised by how little a chicken coop smells!
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