Anyone else opting for the poop-fall-through method?

[PaintedGemsRanch]

Here is our roost. Its hard to tell but the pans stick out about 6in on each side. The pans are from Home Depot/Lowes. They are for mixing concrete, etc. Real cheap and easy to clean. You cant put them in the other direction because they wont stick out far enough to catch the poo. I clean these every week or so and sprinkle with DE to help with the smell, my coop never stinks! The birds can roost in either direction and you dont have to worry. Hope this helps!!

 

[clport]

Miss AF: What you're thinking of is what I'm doing by default and it's awful. I, too, have 1/2 inch hardward cloth for the bottom of my coop (4x8), which is 2 feet above ground. Started out the winter intending to do the deep litter method, but the pine shavings got too wet under the roost for it to be effective for me. I had a 4x8 piece of plywood sitting on top of the hardware cloth because I was worried about drafts. Shavings were on top of plywood and they got so wet that the plywood got soaked. Yuck! Anyway, when I got rid of the litter and let the poop just fall on the plywood, it was such a pain to remove the huge piece of plywood every day to scrape poop that I just permanently removed the 4x8 sheet and made a much smaller poop board to only go under the roosts. However, my girls don't just stay in one place before I get out to the coop in the morning to open the door for them, so they poop in places other than the poop board and it DOES NOT go through the hardware cloth. It forms big lumps of poo in their favorite spots and I have to crawl into the coop (really bad design, only one clean-out door) with a scraper and dust pan to clean it up and throw into the compost pile. One day at Lowe's I found a really tough-bristled BBQ brush and throught that would be terrific to help clean up the smeared poop that stays on the hardware cloth. Doesn't help at all. In the summer time I guess I'll probably shoot the coop floor with the water hose every few days, but living near rainy Portland I don't want to do that in the winter. The coop would never dry out, I'm afraid!
Sorry this is so long, but it's a sore subject at my house right now. DH made modifications to the original coop design that I wanted without consulting me and it's left me with this poop problem. I love him to pieces for giving me my chicken set-up for Mother's Day, but he's so sick of the project right now that he'd barf if I told him I think it would be better to do something different. Really think about it before you decide to forego the poop boards for just the "fall through" method.
Good luck!!

 

[The Sheriff]

I had a wire floor under the roosts and it worked until Oprah jumped down one morning and ripped the staples right out of the wood!

 

[elmo]

I concur with what others have said about wire under roosts. Right now I'm putting three of my bantams in a large bird cage with a wire floor at night in our garage, so they can stay warmer during very cold nights. Every morning, about half of their poop stays on top of the wire with the rest falling through to the tray. Bantam poo is smaller than standard chicken poo, so I can only imagine the situation would be worse with standard sized birds. Wiping off the wire is a pain, because poo bits stick to the bottom and sides of the wire, and its a time consuming job to clean it up.

I like the poop tray I have out in their coop much better. I just lift the whole thing out, dump into compost, hose it down, and I'm done.

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
You really need a bigger, better coop design!!! I know your DH doesn't want to hear that but the amount of time and energy (and back pain) that I save with a well designed coop makes such a huge difference I can't begin to tell you how much more I love my chickens now than ever before!
I used to have my chickens in a small makeshift shed that was not designed to ever house chickens! I loved the fresh eggs but that is the only reason I kept them. I grew to hate the chickens and the amount of work they created! Now I'm finding that not only do I love fresh eggs but I love my girls as well! The chores are almost non-existent (by comparison anyway) and they are so much fun, I just love them to death!
I had no idea that it was simply the design of my coop and run that made the whole ordeal so unpleasant before. It was not the chickens fault at all! Do a bunch of research the next time (like MissAnnieFrannie is doing here) and make it work for you!

 

[clport]

Quote:
You really need a bigger, better coop design!!! I know your DH doesn't want to hear that but the amount of time and energy (and back pain) that I save with a well designed coop makes such a huge difference I can't begin to tell you how much more I love my chickens now than ever before!
I used to have my chickens in a small makeshift shed that was not designed to ever house chickens! I loved the fresh eggs but that is the only reason I kept them. I grew to hate the chickens and the amount of work they created! Now I'm finding that not only do I love fresh eggs but I love my girls as well! The chores are almost non-existent (by comparison anyway) and they are so much fun, I just love them to death!
I had no idea that it was simply the design of my coop and run that made the whole ordeal so unpleasant before. It was not the chickens fault at all! Do a bunch of research the next time (like MissAnnieFrannie is doing here) and make it work for you!

I totally agree with you about the effort trying to make the coop work making the chickens no fun. I did the research and got the design for my coop right off the coop pages here on BYC, but DH thought some elements in that coop were "extras" that weren't necessary. ("I've had chickens for years and they don't need anything fancy.") He's already spent over $1000 just since last May on materials, not to mention his time, on my coop. It should be the Shangri-La of coops and it is very nice, but there are a couple of things that I'd like to be different, like having a door on each end to facilitate easier cleaning. So, I'm finding ways to adapt what he's already built to make things easier. Plus, I have too many hens in the coop now. I started out with 4 girls and that's really all I wanted and what the coop was designed for. Then a friend needed to quickly rehome her 8 hens and she had some terrific layers, so I said I'd take them and their coop. Well, talk about a poorly-designed mess of a coop! Her's was the worst you could imagine. I had to contort my body in ways I didn't know I could just to get the thing semi-clean. After a month of quarantine, her hens moved in with my girls, making my coop crowded. That's another reason why I took out the plywood floor insert in my coop, so that it would improve ventilation. We're all adapting (hens and me) to their living conditions. We've had a very mild winter here in Oregon this year so that means the girls have been able to stay outside in their run most of the day. Things will get better when their new run is constructed and then they'll have lots more room.
All this is a long way to say that I echo your thoughts about a well-designed coop making the whole chicken experience more pleasurable!

 

[SunnyDawn]

Quote:
You really need a bigger, better coop design!!! I know your DH doesn't want to hear that but the amount of time and energy (and back pain) that I save with a well designed coop makes such a huge difference I can't begin to tell you how much more I love my chickens now than ever before!
I used to have my chickens in a small makeshift shed that was not designed to ever house chickens! I loved the fresh eggs but that is the only reason I kept them. I grew to hate the chickens and the amount of work they created! Now I'm finding that not only do I love fresh eggs but I love my girls as well! The chores are almost non-existent (by comparison anyway) and they are so much fun, I just love them to death!
I had no idea that it was simply the design of my coop and run that made the whole ordeal so unpleasant before. It was not the chickens fault at all! Do a bunch of research the next time (like MissAnnieFrannie is doing here) and make it work for you!

I totally agree with you about the effort trying to make the coop work making the chickens no fun. I did the research and got the design for my coop right off the coop pages here on BYC, but DH thought some elements in that coop were "extras" that weren't necessary. ("I've had chickens for years and they don't need anything fancy.") He's already spent over $1000 just since last May on materials, not to mention his time, on my coop. It should be the Shangri-La of coops and it is very nice, but there are a couple of things that I'd like to be different, like having a door on each end to facilitate easier cleaning. So, I'm finding ways to adapt what he's already built to make things easier. Plus, I have too many hens in the coop now. I started out with 4 girls and that's really all I wanted and what the coop was designed for. Then a friend needed to quickly rehome her 8 hens and she had some terrific layers, so I said I'd take them and their coop. Well, talk about a poorly-designed mess of a coop! Her's was the worst you could imagine. I had to contort my body in ways I didn't know I could just to get the thing semi-clean. After a month of quarantine, her hens moved in with my girls, making my coop crowded. That's another reason why I took out the plywood floor insert in my coop, so that it would improve ventilation. We're all adapting (hens and me) to their living conditions. We've had a very mild winter here in Oregon this year so that means the girls have been able to stay outside in their run most of the day. Things will get better when their new run is constructed and then they'll have lots more room.
All this is a long way to say that I echo your thoughts about a well-designed coop making the whole chicken experience more pleasurable!

I feel for you!

 

[MissAnnieFrannie]

Lol, well thanks everyone for all the input! feel free to keep it coming!

I still have a couple more weeks to make the final decision, so I am still researching researching and more researching lol. I dont mind a pan or poop board, I am just trying to find the most efficient way to *try* keep the coop fresh as well as get all the composty goodness into one centralized place!

thinking and thinking and more thinking...

 

[gsim]

Hey Annie. Fellow E Tennessean here, W Knox Co..

If possible, do a poop board located a foot or two below roost. Best results will be if roost is 12' away from wall. Use 1/2" osb and glue linoleum to one side. Make it 24" wide and center it under the roost. Build braces/mounts, and make it so that the poop board just lies on top of the braces.

I have a walk-in coop so for me, the day starts with letting the chooks out the two pop doors and tossing a half-cup of scratch for them. Then I close down the pop doors and go in and open 2 of the 4 windows for ventilation. Then I scrape the poop boards

into a plastic bin and snap the lid back down and store it under a poop board. (every 3 days it goes to compost or garden) Works real well and I can't imagine doing it any other way. Litter will last a year this way with only adding a bit of topping every 3 months. Coop always smells clean and can smell the grass clippings (free) that I use for litter. (I top the litter with a little hay in mid-winter) I set my poop boards at 24" ht and roosts at 48" ht. The chooks hop up to the poop board, then to the roost, not even needing a walkway. My nest shelf is also at 24" ht on opposite wall with walkboards that they rarely use.

I am wanting to change over to galvanized sheet metal poop boards when the weather warms up. Easier to scrape

and get all of it. I use a stainless steel 8" drywall finishing knife and it works great and does not stick

or get rusty.

Have seen small coops that have the poop board designed so as to be easily removed and dumped and replaced from the outside. I would do that if my operation was smaller. (It should be. I have too many chickens.

)

Gerry

 

[KarlD]

My hubby designed our coop and he did the fall through poop method and I have to say it works for us. Once a week I take my scraper/rake and push the poop through the wire but most of it falls through to the ground. Twice a month I rake from under the coop and put the poop in my compost pile. I am in SE GA so very few days of extremel cold weather but when it does get cold I just put some pine straw in the coop to cut down on the drafts. I feel I can keep the coop cleaner with this method.

Very helpful! I also appreciate you saying the maintenance intervals. I think I'll modify this to my own purposes (mobile chicken coop in a tropical country).