I thought I'd share my lazy chicken-keeper's method for poop deck maintenance. The whole business takes me about 3 minutes from start to finish and is pretty painless.
My secret weapon is a gold-panning sieve that cost me about 11 bucks:
The poop deck (and the floor of the chickenhouse) is covered with sand. After a night of poopage it looks like this:
I just scrape the sand off onto the sieve with a trowel:
The sieve itself fits right into a 5-gallon bucket, so you can dump the sand back onto the poop deck if you want. I usually just let it fall through to the floor, though, and put fresh sand on the deck.
Shake it down and, voila! No-mess, non-stick, sand-covered poop balls ready for incorporation into the compost heap.
And the poop deck is ready to go another nine innings:
Gold-panning equipment. Who knew?
My secret weapon is a gold-panning sieve that cost me about 11 bucks:
The poop deck (and the floor of the chickenhouse) is covered with sand. After a night of poopage it looks like this:
I just scrape the sand off onto the sieve with a trowel:
The sieve itself fits right into a 5-gallon bucket, so you can dump the sand back onto the poop deck if you want. I usually just let it fall through to the floor, though, and put fresh sand on the deck.
Shake it down and, voila! No-mess, non-stick, sand-covered poop balls ready for incorporation into the compost heap.
And the poop deck is ready to go another nine innings:
Gold-panning equipment. Who knew?
