Curious about wire mesh flooring

[melalthia]

Hi there

I'm new around here and my husband I are in the process of building our first coop for 10 chickens. Because everyone here says bigger is better we are going overboard. Our coop is going to be 5X8 feet and the run is 10X20 feet. We were talking to my father-in-law who used to raise chickens and he was telling us how his coop was elevated with a wire mesh for the floor.

Anyone here use a 1X1 mesh fencing instead of a wood or dirt floor? I'm just curious what it's like for cleaning, if you have. We aren't going to do it because 1)we are making our coop big enough to walk into and the floor needs to be strong enough to stand on 2) I think that not only it would be hard on their tootsies, I'm guessing cleanup could actually be harder with this. But maybe I'm wrong?

I'll probably be posting progress photos and asking tons of advice from y'all. I've been learning tons just by lurking...

cheers!
-m

 

[willheveland]

Quote:
glad to hear you are not using the wire floor. It's a terrible way to raise any animal.I don't even like seeing rabbits on it. Will

 

[cmom]

I have rather large wire under my roosts. That seems to be where they poop the most. If I did that coop over I would not put wire under the roosts, but poop catch pans. I am going to re-do the roosts in both of my coops and I think I'm going to do away with the wire and put a floor in that part of that coop. My other coop is all floored, and I'm going to put poop catch pans under those roosts.

Here is an old picture of the coop with the wire under the roost.

 

[melalthia]

Quote:
Hi will

Well, it's not my style. However, if the design is good... I can imagine potential in it. The way my father-in-law described it, it sounded like the ladies had plenty of space, perches, ledges and brooding boxes to hang out in. And they had a good sized run where they had free access to. I don't think it was cruel or anything.. just old school.

Like i said, i'm doing a raised coop with a wood floor. (We are going to do the deep litter method.) But I thought maybe someone out there had gotten the idea of a mesh flooring to work? Still curious..

-m

 

[willheveland]

Something I like to do is use 2x4 wire to box in under their roost area so they can't pick through it.Most of their pooing is done at night under their roost.This way I let that build up during the winter,sprinkling lime and shavings over it to keep it from smelling.It kinda looks like the idea cmom uses but with a floor. I have it on hinges so it lifts up to clean it out in the spring. Will