Best winter poop scraper

[superchemicalgirl]

Recently it's been so cold the chicken poo has frozen. This is especially troublesome for me on the poo board. I had difficulties removing the poo and even broke some plastic scrapers that I was using. However, I found this in Home Depot last time I was in and tried it in the coop. It is so fantastic!

What do you find works the best?

 

[Muggsmagee]

You know...that's a good idea. Especially on the roosts where it sticks and freezes. I need to find something to clean the waterers out with...we are using a side by side feeder waterer and the food ends up in the water and makes a mess (of course!). It was to be a temporary solution. I've been using my hand

...but would love to find something that gets into square corners and such...still looking.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

I had a roost poo pile that was just ungodly. A few one overs with this thing and it was cleaner than it's ever been (except when new).

My biggest water problem is the temperature. I have a heated base but my coop is more than 50 feet from the outdoor outlet so I have to buy a new extension cord.

I believe a mason chisel might work for you. Or a nice plastic spatula with holes in it.

 

[patandchickens]

IMO a taping knife like that is the best droppings-board scraper ANY time of year

If you are having problems with the poo freezing tightly to the board this time of year, whatcha wanna do is every day after you clean it, pick up some shavings off the floor (you can use the taping knife for that too

) and sprinkle them all over the droppings board. Unless you have exceptionally restless/flappy chickens who flap all the shavings off the board -- which seems to be pretty rare -- you will find that enough shavings will stay there til the overnight period to allow the poo to fall on THEM rather than on the board, and you can scrape them loose very very easily.

Ta da

If you have super-flappy chickens and shavings off the floor just keep blowing right off the droppings board, you can get some picnic-table clips (or improvise) to clip a coupla sheets of newspapers on there every night, then just remove that in the morning, works no matter how cold it gets.

Muggsmagee (edited to fix attribution) -- do you mean to get *ice* out of waterers (safest solution: have two sets and if one waterer ices up real bad, bring it into the house to thaw) or just to clean gunk out of waterers (solution: dollar-store brush-on-a-handle like you'd use for washing dishes in your sink)

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[oldchickenlady]

I keep a hoe in my coop and scrape the poo off the board into a 5 gallon bucket with that. I also sprinkle shavings on my poop board to help keep it from sticking.

 

[cottage19]

I'm definately going to try tossing a few handfulls of shavings on the poop boards tomorrow when I tidy up. I had to break the poop up with a shovel edge today! Thankfully, we only have 7 birds so although it was frozen solid, there wasn't a lot of it. The good news is that our waterer heat plate is working great.

 

[knjinnm]

Quote:
Have you thought about a poop hammock?

Joe

 

[Attila the Hen]

I put fresh straw down daily on the board under the roost. I try to re use whatever straw I can and it probably is a bit expensive, but it is so easy to clean. I have a little hand rake that I pull the droppings out with and put that on my compost heap. I throw in a few handfuls of fresh straw and it's clean for the day. I did have some frozen droppings on the porch I had to chip off.........I don't like winter.

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Quote:
Problem is the days are so short here I leave work and it's dark and I come home and it's dark and they're roosting. So I have 2 waterers but swapping them is pointless as the girls are asleep after I get home.

However I got 26 eggs today from 30 laying girls so I'm doing something right.

 

[elmo]

Quote:
Sand is also a good thing to sprinkle on the droppings board or tray, and it won't blow away, either.