how to make your chicken coop smell nice

I have too much time on my hands.

Our chicken coop doesn't smell bad. It smells like chickens. But not bad.

Ever the perfectionist, I set out to see if there was some kind of nice smelling, non-harmful stuff I could spray or leave in the coop to keep it smelling ultra-fresh.

I came across this post on the Community Chickens site (yeah) by Jennifer Burcke of 1840 Farm and gave it a shot.

I slightly altered it. Her post calls for Dawn Lavender dish soap, but I didn't have that. I did have some lavender scented Dr. Bronner's, though, and figured that might do the trick.

And now the coop smells lovely! We have a fan in there, so when I let the girls out in the morning I just spray one or two times into the fan. It diffuses it a bit and fills the room with a fresh, lavendery minty fragrance.

(This smells good in general, so you can use it in your house too, if you don't have chickens.)

If you are a crazy chicken person and want to give it a shot, here goes:

In addition to smelling nice, the grapefruit seed extract acts as a disinfectant and the tea tree and peppermint are insect repellents. The lavender just smells nice, and I suppose is calming to humans, but who knows what chickens think about lavender.

If I was a good blogger I probably would have photographed this lovely spray bottle in the grass surrounded by sliced grapefruit and fresh sprigs of lavender, but alas, you'll have to settle for this wood siding of the coop.

Also it's super hot up here these days. This is Khaleesi, hating the heat. Did you know that chickens pant to keep cool, like dogs? There you go.