Building my coop, question about dropping board

[sunrisechicks]

Hello to all, i am building my coop for my new hens. I live in north texas, and have a question on my poo board design. My coop is 2 ft off the ground. Under the roost instead of a board that can be removed and cleaned, I am thinking of having poultry netting where the droppings will go all the way to the ground. Underneath the coop this area where the dropping will collect will be screened off so no critters can walk in the mess. Also this area will have sheet metal partitions that will hinge that can be closed up in the winter so that drafts under the hens while they are roosting will be minimized. The idea behind this design is so that I can reach under the coop with a rake and easily collect the droppings for fertilizer use. Thank you for any advise.

 

[elmo]

Hmm. I briefly considered doing something like this, but decided on a removeable poop tray instead. I use a plastic boot tray under the roost that I simply pull out, take over to my composter and dump out. There's a picture on my BYC page. I love this, and my coop has stayed perfectly clean.

I decided against the drop through pit because I didn't want to fuss with droppings that get stuck on the wire (I deal with that enough with our indoor parrots). I didn't want poop to accumulate, I wanted to clean it out daily. I didn't want to have to rake poop up into a pile then move it somehow to another place. And I didn't want to have to fuss with building another contraption into my coop. Unless the wire pit is inside a predator proof run, you'd need to make the pit wire predator proof, which means small openings likely to catch the poo more than let it drop through. And then when you close it up for the winter, you're just going to have poo accumulating on the wire and metal?