I inherited a coop when I brought my house...it's a good size enough for the chickens I have. The previous owner used it to raise quails. The coop is about 2 feet off the ground and covered with chicken wire and hardware cloth on all sides and the bottom with a roof on top. My question is do I need to put something firm on the bottom or can I just leave it made out of hardware cloth? I was hoping to do the the deep litter method by letting the poop just drop though the hardware cloth onto the ground below which is currently a layer of landscaping material covered with dry leaves. Should I remove the landscaping material so the can scratch the dirt under the leaves? I have no plans to lower the coop but could add a tray under the floor of hardware cloth to catch poop. Ideally the chickens will only sleep and lay in the coop as there is a good size run attached. Any advice would be great.
Chicken poop is way bigger than quail poop. the chicken poop would cake up on the wire and not fall through... so you will have to put some kind of bedding on the wire. I am thinking that you could just do deep litter method on top of the wire, maybe it would even help the composting, since it would be adding some air, and drain extra water. The downside that I see is that the composting deep litter might rot out the wire... You would have to research that possibility, because I have no idea really. I think the chickens might tear up the landscape fabric, so I would remove it completely.