How To Clean Your Animal Housing Naturally
Keeping animal housing clean ie; chicken coops, goat houses, duck sanctuaries, is essential and not an understatement to say VITAL in their health. Build up of ammonia’s in their waste in poorly ventilated | unkept housing can cause raspatory issues and open the door to other diseases. Here are some things I keep on hand in the storage around each animal sanctuary for everyday use.
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G L A S S R E U S A B L E S P R A Y B O T T L E S
I always have a few amber glass bottles for on hand cleaning. This comes in handy for washing roosts from the coop, scrubbing the algae out of the buckets (which you have to do regularly during hot weather) or just giving your housing and coops a refresh + disinfectin. You can find a glass spray bottle like mine HERE. The amber color helps prevent UV rays from penetrating through the glass and destroying certain products you may choose to add to create your cleaner.
N O N T O X - A L L P U R P O S E C L E A N E R
In each bottle I’ve put different ingredients depending on what I need the cleaner for. For scrubbing water toughs, roost bars and other things, I use a mixture of 1:1 ratio castile soap containing lavender EO + distilled water + eucalyptus oil (10 drops). Castile soap is extremely diverse and great for cleaning a wide variety of things. It is vegetable based, fully bio degradable and non toxic. You can use it in diy bug sprays for your garden, laundry soap, house cleaner, bodywash and so much more!
DO NOT USE EUCALYPTUS IN THE COOP AROUND FLOCK
Eucalyptus is toxic if ingested but is anti fungal + disinfectant and anti microbial making it great for killing germs. My roosts are removable and I wash them outside away from my birds.
N A T U R A L D I Y C L E A N E R
For inside the coop, I use a 1:1 ratio of white distilled vinegar + distilled water, lavender EO + cedarwood oil. Cedarwood is amazing at repelling ticks and other insects + great at pest and fly control. Vinegar is a cheap, effective, and a non-toxic solution to breaking down grime and it’s high acidity makes it amazing to clean with. It' is not disinfectant however, so adding EO’ that are, help to make it perfect.
Another way to create sweet smelling and disinfecting vinegar is to infuse it with acidic peels. Lemon peels, orange, tangerine, are all good choices. Simply add fresh peels to a mason jar and fill with white distilled vinegar. Let sit for several days and up to 1 month. Add to your spray bottles (half way) and fill the rest of the way with either boiled and cooled water, or distilled water. I choose to create my own cleaning products out of natural items for the safety of my animals as well as my own health. Many conventional cleaners, even those claiming to be “natural" paraben and phthalate free, still contain extremely harmful chemicals like formaldehyde and dmdm hydantoin which is a antimicrobial formaldehyde releaser and preservative. Don’t be fooled by the fancy label on your cleaner!! Always read the ingredients and googles what you don't recognize.
E S S E N T I A L O I L S
People severely underestimate the power held by plants, herbs and therefor oils created from them. I have first hand used its healing abilities with my animals from curing unknown symptoms, to naturally and effectively preventing and deworming them and even healing my own body with their help.
Eucalyptus oil - Antifungal, antibacterial. Used by humas to clear respiratory blockages. I add this to any solution to disinfect. I add it in my home cleaners and cleaners for animal bins, roosts etc. You can also use it with castile soap and warm water for a natural way to clean udders before milking. (see natural udder cleaner here)
Cedarwood oil- Perfect for any kind of animal bug repellant. Instantly zaps moisture from any insect on contact + flies and other bugs cannot stand the smell. It is topically safe for animals after diluting in carrier oil or water. Use in animal houses for pest control.
Citronella - Pest and bug controll
Lemon oil - disinfectant
Lavender - disinfectant, antifungal, soothing
Oregano - This oil is a holy grail of oils. It is magnificently healing and can be used from stopping disease, reversing many health issues as well as deworming your animals
S P O N G E S
Most obviously you’ll need sponges in your arsenal in able to do a lot of scrubbing. For roosts I use a paint scraper as it seems to work more efficiently (and I don’t deal with poop sticking to the sponges)
Some other odds and ends I keep handy are things like dematiaceous earth, which we use for soaking up any moisture that can occur in our housing, pest control, and dust baths. You can add your EO’s to it as well and create a dust bathing area for your chickens, or a potent way to repel insects!
