Litter Questions: to deep littler or not deep litter?

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charmandi

charmandi

In the Brooder
Apr 30, 2016
4
0
42
Alvin TX
Hi there! I'm new to BYC and this is my first post. I have 5 pullets and working on building the coop currently, it's about 40% done. I have been reading a lot about different litter methods and wondering if deep litter is the way to go because A. I would like the compost for my garden and B. If I go out of town I won't have to worry about the litter much.

I live in South Texas where it is hot and muggy much of the year. My coop design currently has the nesting boxes placed at about 12-14 inches off the floor of the coop. Is that going to be enough room to do deep litter? With the climate in my area would it work ok or be too hot? Thanks!
 
I use dropping boards, not deep litter. We live in the Ohio River Valley, so have very humid summers. Poop adds moisture (obviously), so I would think the labor that would go into turning, adding drying agents, bedding, ect. to keep things dry would be more of a pain than to use dropping boards, so that all that manure is NOT going into the bedding. But I'm biased because I love my dropping boards
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Thanks for the input! I'll look more into dropping boards for sure. Do you use exclusively dropping boards or do you use sand or anything else as well?
 
I use pine or aspen bedding on the floor of my coops. In the warm months, the bedding rarely gets pooped in, because they're outside most of the day. But we do get winters here (yay - hot humid summers AND snow/cold winters!!
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), so my bedding DOES get pooped up from Dec. - February. But for 8 or 9 months out of the year, those dropping boards really help! I have three coops, and use dropping boards in all of them. Here's one example from my "big girl" coop:

I use a small bucket and a 6" putty/drywall knife to rake the poo into the bucket. I scrape mine daily, but even if you only scraped them 2-3x per week, it still helps keep your bedding cleaner....
 

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