It’s a backyard chicken keeper’s worst nightmare.

That barnyard smell.

For the first month, it was totally fine. Then one hot, muggy day, after a heavy downpour, it arrived. I had to be standing literally at or in the coop, but the smell was undeniable.

Of course, I freaked out. I worried about it getting worse, and possibly upsetting my neighbors. Trying to be helpful, Matt took a walk by the coop and said he couldn’t smell a thing.

Could it be possible I imagined the whole thing?

A couple days later, after another rain, Matt finally admitted he could smell a slight barnyard smell.

I quickly figured out that the smell went away when the sand in the run dried out. But when it rained …

As with any other dilemma, I consulted the Google Machine.

I learned about proper drainage, and using pelletized lime to combat smells. Then I discovered Sweet PDZ.

Marketed as a horse stall deodorizer, I found Sweet PDZ also is safe to use in chicken coops. It works by absorbing and neutralizing ammonia in the chicken waste.

Apparently, other people had the same idea because I had trouble finding it in stock. We finally tracked down a bag at a Tractor Supply Co. about an hour’s drive away.

By the time we returned, I was anxious to see if this stuff works.

I had already gotten into a routine of scooping out the chicken poop on a daily basis. So I started with a light cleanup, including of the bazillion feathers the girls shed each week.

The PDZ directions said to use 6 cups on the first application, then 1-3 cups for maintenance. So I used a coffee mug to spread six cups of the powder on top of the freshly cleaned coop sand. Next, I used a metal rake to mix it into the sand.

By the next time I went out for a visit, I could tell a difference.

But the big test was with the next rainstorm, which came a couple days later. It was a huge storm, that splashed lots of water into the coop sand.

And when I went out to take a big sniff?

It smelled like heaven.