Droppings tray design

[beakkeeper]

Under the roosts...

I was thinking of a removable plywood sheet, with chicken wire over it so the birds don't sit on it and a wooden wall around so litter doesn't fall in. The board could be pulled out from the outside. There would be a floor underneath this tray, and a low, long horizontal "door" on the outside would be able to be flipped down so the tray can be accessed. It sounds confusing, but really is simple--in theory, anyway.

How does anyone else do it?

 

[kick'n chick'n]

sounds good but i think it would be alittle heavy depending on size. seen on here where people use rubbermaid tubs.

 

[patandchickens]

I just have a wide board that I scrape droppings off each morning (cheap dustpan and a bucket, takes like 15 seconds). You can see a pic - tho not a great one - on my BYC homepage.

There are lots of ways to do it though.

Pat

 

[ChanceRider]

I use under-the-bed type plastic bins that sit on a plywood shelf a couple inches under the roost. I use shavings and DE in the bins, and re-fresh every few days. Then, every couple of weeks I toss the bin contents in my garden and start with a new layer of shavings and DE. Very easy and cheap to build as well as easy to maintain. I saw something similar in a post on these threads, and just adapted it to fit my coop.

What works well in my small coop is that under the poop bins are the nesting boxes. They're raised just enough that the chickens can walk under the boxes... so no floor space is "wasted". The pic below was taken the day I installed the boxes but you can see the poop bins above.

 

[bheila]

We just use a piece of plywood slanted a little and covered it with some linoleum. It's so easy to scrap off with a hoe. I would much rather not have a poop board to bother with but we decided to put the nest boxes under one of the roosts to utilize space.

 

[OcoeeG]

I did the same thing you are talking about. I made a 20ish x 20ish plywood drawer with flared sides on it under my roosts and lined it with plastic. I can pull it out from the outside of the coop. Good system for functionality. It is a bit heavy but doable. My girlfriend has a hard time carrying it too far but it works well.

 

[Mrs MIA]

Quote:
This is what I did... except that it's about 4x8'.

I scrape it off every morning in an attempt to keep the poo to a minimum.

 

[Marcy]

I'm a little lazy and don't want to have to scrape every morning, so I did something like what you're talking about, but more... all-encompassing

The whole floor of my coop is wire, with several perches and nesting boxes attached to the walls. There's a solid wood floor about 6 inches under that, and it slides out. We only have to slide it out and clean it off maybe once a month, and the chickens are never walking around on or sleeping near any droppings- they fall right through. At first I was worried the chickens wouldn't like a wire floor but after the initial hesitation they don't mind it a bit!

 

[Mrs MIA]

Quote:
What size wire did you use? 1" chicken wire? Or 1/2" hardware cloth? 1/2"x1"? That's a great idea. I wish I could do that on mine, but the coop is too small to maneuver something that size around.

But I might be able to improvise... hmmmm....

 

[Marcy]

Thanks

I used regular chicken wire from home depot, which I guess would be one-inch. I have some pictures on my website... there's not really a good one of the inside of the coop but I have one when we were still building the coop where you can sort of see how the plywood bottom slides out- in the picture it's bowing a little because the supports weren't in yet, but you can get the gist of it:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rsiebenmann/ChickenPics?authkey=1Xpoc05dIdA#5244434674590141426

And then the chicken wire is fastened to the top edge of the larger boards you can see along that bottom edge of the coop.

Edit: I cannot seem to get this link to work so if you'd like to see the photo in question you can click on my website link under my name, then the photo gallery link at the top right of that page, and it's image #137. sheesh