12 Cornish Rock hens eating and pooping around the clock...need help!

[jacobhawaiifarm]

Hello everyone!

I got 12 cornish rock hens (broiler chickens) and 12 Rhode islands reds.
The Rhode island isn't so bad but my 12 Cornish hens are eating and pooping machine.
They poop so much that the grass can't recover fast enough and my grass backyard is beginning
to become a dirt backyard.
It isn't that bad with the Rhode island Reds....but the Cornish is destroying everything haha

They poop so much to the point that my backyard is starting to smell.

Just random questions...these 12 Cornish is pretty much hard to take care (in terms of cleaning)
How does the commercial farms with 10,000 hens deal with this kind of problem?

I know that they don't move the coop around like i do with my hens.
How do they manage to clean the area?

(sorry, i am trying to expand my chicken farm and i am in my trial testing with 24 hens
But want to raise broilers in the near future. Just want to know how to keep up with the cleaning)

 

[aart]

That's what Cornish X do....eat and poop..... for 8 weeks then you eat them.
How old are they now?
How big is the area you have them in?

 

[pauleberly]

You could try a different meat breed next year. I hear a lot of people like red Rangers

Cornish X are meant to grow large, and fast. They will poop a lot. Maybe you could sprinkle down some pdz or even some dried lawn clippings in the area before/after you move your tractor

 

[ShannonR]

Chicken tractors and moveable pens work well.

 

[ChickenLegs13]

I have large pens so excessive poop isn't a problem, the rest of the chickens just scratch it into the dirt. Grass?? What is this grass you speak of?

 

[donrae]

You can smell the commercial farms miles away. They have massive exhaust fans that keep the ammonia moving out of the chicken house constantly. The workers wear masks to keep from inhaling all the nasty. The birds basically live in their own feces. It's basically a full time job to walk around the chicken house and pick up dead birds.

That's how the big boys do it.

You need a good amount of space for Cx, or very frequent moves. They can be in a smaller area, but you need to clean a lot or do deep bedding.

I hear fermenting feed cuts down on the amount of poop quite a bit, you might look into that. Several threads about fermented feed.

 

[jacobhawaiifarm]

Thanks for all your reply everyone

I am experimenting on producing a non-toxic enzyme to remove
the smell, remove all the ammonia and kill the bacterial.

i am somewhat successful but working on a new version
I know the enzyme with wood shaving works better.

I am in the process of testing with the wood shaving (bedding)
with the enzyme.

hopefully, it will solve all my problems.

thanks again everyone

 

[Phoenixxx]

DEFINITELY tractor them! I'm near the end of my first batch ever of 20 meat chicks and boy, what a different beast! I had to get them out of the house permanently by the tenth day - I just couldn't keep up! Bf and son built an 6'x12' tractor with a "coop" (2 wooden crates) at one end that we rigged with a ceramic heat lamp since they were still so young and the weather at the time still cold. The more they poop, the more I move them - keeps the spread fairly even and the lawn recovers better, faster. They're about to return to the path they did just two weeks ago - that's how fast my lawn is recovering I couldn't imagine having them in a fixed coop-and-run set-up like my dual-purpose flock.

 

[ChickNanny13]

FF is great at no more feed waste & you'll end up using less feed....Takes a bit more time but worth the savings & benefits. The thread on FF is long but worth reading.

 

[phalenbeck]

My last batch was on a screen floor. A couple of blocks for food and water. They pooped through the screen floor, and hosed excess to the ground. I moved is a few times, and put leaves and mulch on the ground. Worked well.