Floors-mesh, slats-or solid??

[Markp1964]

As I try to lay out the hen house I'll build over the winter for use come spring, I'm really drawn to the convenience of a pull out floor for cleaning. This will be a small structure for at most 4 birds. Most of the coops Ive seen with a pull out floor seem to use a wire mesh floor which seems to be NOT recommended-a case of human convenience not matching up with what is good for the birds.

One possibility I thought of was a mesh floor with a metal lined pull out floor beneath, and a line of roosts spaced 6 or 8 inches apart, about 4 inches above the wire-essentially the whole coop would be a large sized dropping pit. The birds would not really step on the wire but would move around the house on the perches.

If mesh is bad news would wooden slats or dowels be a better choice?

 

[Rafter 7 Paint Horses]

Wooden slats would be fine, I wouldn't use dowels.
The slats would have to be close enough together so their feet can't slip through them. You don't want any broken legs.

The problem with this, is that the poop probably won't fall through very easily. You will have to scrape or wash it out frequently.

It wouldn't be too bad if you did this every day, you could just use a hoe to scrape the poop. If it is a small structure, you could do this when feeding every day & would only take an extra couple of minutes. But if it got built up, it would be hard to clean.

We had thought about slats, but decided against it. We just built another coop with a dirt floor.

Jean

 

[AK-Bird-brain]

We tried a wire mesh over a pull out drawer and it just didnt work out. if you waited more than 3-4 days to clean it out it was to heavy to slide in and out.
We went to good old fashioned sawdust on the floor.

 

[littlelemon]

Our whole coop has a hardware cloth floor. I have covered most of the floor with heavy duty rubber mats and covered them with straw. Under the roosts I have left the wire bare and the droppings fall through. I use flattened cardboard boxes to catch the droppings and just slide them out and change them when they are covered. Our coop is raised about a foot off of the ground so it is easy for me to slide the boxes in and out. I should mention that our coop is built inside a garage so I don't have a problem with the cardboard getting wet on the ground.