advice on sand coop/run daily chores with new laying pullets

[tomphot]

I have a sand bottom coop. My large poop board has PDZ on it and it takes maybe 5 minutes a day to sift. Very little poop ends up on the floor as they spend little time in there. Zero smell.

 

[aart]

The poop is still there....it's just covered up. If you're ok with that, then that's great.

That poop won't be there for long tho,
with deep litter it will decompose it very quickly.

 

[Little Coop on Salt Creek]

The one big thing I notice in our set up (the coop is all sand and the run is 2/3 sand; 1/3 hay topped dirt, grass clippings, compostable items safe for chicks) is the hay side gets flies. I don't like that, but that part only gets turned not cleaned and removed. After I read the fly topic of the week.. I was tempted to change it over to all sand

 

[ChickenLady2014]

Hi everybody!

I am curious about some daily flock management and how ya'll manage your daily duties. So this is what we have: a sand floor coop and run (run actually is 2/3 sand and 1/3 dirt and straw). You can see a pic of the outside of our set-up in my avatar picture. Our girls are of the following ages.. 6 pullets are 17 weeks today, 10 pullets and 1 cockerel are 16 weeks today and 6 more pullets are 12 weeks today.

Right now, I go out in the early morning (usually between 6:30 and 7:00) to clean any poo in the run I missed from the night before, open up their automatic food feeders (we cover at night, to discourage mice, etc), open up run pop door, clean overnight poo out of coop, open or close coop windows (depending upon weather) and top-off any food and check the waterers. Then depending upon our daily schedule I will go out again between 9:30 and 10:30 to let everyone free-range in the backyard for about an hour.

I have heard to leave all chores until egg-laying is complete for the day, so I am curious if that is a good "rule" to follow or if others have done different schedules that work well. We have 1 hen, 17 weeks today (a Silver Laced Wyandotte) who we have observed starting to squat. So, we will have at least 1 layer in our bunch of newbies soon (we hope!)

Hi my coop floors are 3/4 contractors sand & a 1/4 PDZ. I normally pooper scoop mine once a day or twice with the 2 coops that have chicks growing in. It's not bad if you keep up with it. Love it in the winter when they are frozen poopsicles ~ really easy then. I just rake the debris into a pile then use a pooper scooper to sift the manure out from the sand. This I take & toss on my compost pile to age for my gardens. I usually don't chage my cleaning habits due to the birds being on the nest, but I have backed out the door & went to a different coop when I found a newbie on the nest before.