good poop board or injury waiting to happen?

[kie4]

Those cute little pullet poops, from only 4 chicks...a lot?? Pffft...Just wait, you ain't seen nothing yet!!

Seriously tho, the poops get much bigger once they start laying.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/t/...raphic-gross-poop-pictures/1100#post_13179595

Hahaha, You have me scared at the amount of poop to come @aart . Thanks for the link to your poop board set up, looks like a good tried and tested system you've got there.
The set up we have can handle some expansion, but as a beginner I'm going to stick with these 4 and see how they go for a year at least. It's all fun so far, but it might get serious when cleaning up mountains of poo in the middle of winter in the dark. So far, feeding, eggs, ventilation, predator prevention and waterer have been on the easy side. I didn't give poop removal much thought until the chicks were in the coop.

 

[kie4]

I vote for the poop conveyor!

A morning "cleansing" after everyone is up would probably be easier (and significantly cheaper) than something slow moving, think hand crank or simple switched motor. Also, after hearing that motor/servo noise every half hour, I see in my mind 4 chickens either stuck to the ceiling in fright, or face down on the poop conveyor and ready to go into the collection container from lack of sleep...

Have fun!

Hi @azjustin , the morning cleansing is what I'm doing right now since installing the above poop slider. A quick scrape of the dried up sticky ones gets them to the bottom, then spoon them out into a pot and onto the compost. It's not glamorous at all spooning poop. Scraping it down the slider is fine, the careful spooning action is something I'd like to cut out by adding a hole or funnel into a collection receptacle.

 

[kie4]

Not sure if you are aware of it, but your conveyor idea is what some commercial laying houses use to remove droppings from beneath the laying cages. Droppings drop directly on these conveyor belts, which run the length of the buildings. For some, that is over 500 feet. Once a day they come on and send a river of the stuff out one end of the building into a litter house where it resides until it can be loaded up and spread on grain fields or pastures. At the same time, birds in those houses lay their eggs on the cage floor where they roll down onto small belt conveyors and once a day, those conveyors come on and send a river of eggs out the other end of the building. Largest house like that I've seen housed about 100,000 birds each. Smallest I've seen housed about 30,000 each. Even with 4 birds, same process and principle might apply.......only thing different being the scale, except that yours would only snag the stuff they drop while on the roosts. The rest will fall somewhere else. So maybe a lot different. A lot of expense for not all that much benefit?

BTW, traditional droppings boards were made of tongue and groove car siding and in lengths of about 4 feet or so. Something one person could easily lift out to clean. About the same as a 2' x 4' piece of 3/4" plywood. That thick because that was what they had to work with. You could do the same with lighter weight 3/8" or 1/2" plywood or MDO, with a piece of Formica sheeting or FRP glued to the surface so it would be easy to clean. As you discovered, it only needs to be wide enough to catch what falls from beneath the roost. If only a single roost bar, maybe no wider than a foot or so,

Once upon a time it was also common practice to make a droppings pit or box beneath the roosts. The top of this pit was only 2 feet or so above the floor of the house, which might hold 100 or more birds. Roosts were elevated over this box, with 1" x 2" wire separating them to keep the birds out of the pit. Droppings would accumulate in this box to depths of a foot or more. Once or twice a year they would go in and shovel all that out by hand. I can't imagine how nasty a job that must have been.

Lastly comes the deep litter or built up litter option. What I like to think of as the thick diaper method. This may be the best method yet for dealing with what is a nasty situation under the best of circumstances.

Hi @Howard E , trying to emulate commercial laying houses do on a small scale I think it the way to go for low chicken maintenance. The roll away nesting box is easy enough to do, but the poop conveyor is a lot harder. A 2ft deep poop box sounds like it would be easy to maintain (a bit like the dreaded 6 month dentist check-up. not nice to do, but it's only twice a year). But building up poop over time must smell a lot and it's lost composting time too.

So far the 18" wide sloped board is catching everything dropped from roosting front-ways and back-ways. Also the slope on the board stops any bird roosting on it. I thought it could be an injury hazard but it might be just uncomfortable enough an angle to keep them off it.They jump up onto the roost from a step I put in for them, then fly down. I'll have to watch as they get bigger if they don't have enough space to fly down and I'll need to build a better dismount method for them. Staggered rungs or ramp.

Thanks for the info and advice!

 

[kie4]

Our OSB poop board has never broke or fallen. It's supported with 2x4s secured to the coop walls. A simple modification maybe all you need.

Cool setup @ChickenMammX4 . Can I ask if you had the ramp originally? Or was it added to help the chickens get down from the roost?

 

[kie4]

You only have four chickens and they are still pretty young from what I read in your post, 7 weeks. They will probably spread out more as they mature. Chicks really like to huddle together, adults often spread out more, especially in the heat of summer. You may find the droppings board could be a bit wider too. If it’s only a foot wide you may be missing some you could otherwise catch.

Chickens poop a lot all the time, whether on the roost or just walking around. During the day it is scattered but at night since they are in one place it accumulates. Getting it out of your coop can help your bedding last a lot longer so you don’t have to clean the entire coop floor nearly as often.

Something you might consider is to get a plastic bin or two from Walmart or someplace similar and just put that on the floor under the roosts. As long as your door is big enough you can carry that outside that’s about as easy as you can get as far as collecting and cleaning with as few chickens as you have.

The top of my built-in brooder is my droppings board but the brooder is only 6’ long. That leaves a space at the end of the roosts. I keep a couple of plastic bins in that area to catch droppings. When I scrape that droppings board I scrape it into a bin, which I then carry to my compost bin. Pretty easy.

There are so many different ways you can do any of this. The idea is pick one that is convenient for you.

Thanks @Ridgerunner , I see they will spread out so best to build with that in mind. I am now at 18" and that seems to be catching everything that drops. The plan is to make the bedding last a lot longer with the goal of fewer required changes. The door opens for the 4ft width of the hen house, so I can accommodate most poop board solutions. I like the sound of your bins either side of the brooder top, some fall in the bin, others get scraped into a bin. Very good system. It's easy to just grab 2 bins.

 

[knwisdom]

I am new to raising chickens and just completed coop construction in May. Thanks to the good advice on BYC I also went with a board with zeolite that I scoop under the roosts. It works really well. I built it to withstand anything is has a 2x4 frame screwed into the coop walls on three sides and a 1x4 across the front to prevent them from roosting on the the edge. The board itself is leftover panelling from the coop walls. It is about 2 1/2 ft deep so that it is an easy reach for scooping. Of course one of my girls roosts in the window frame so I get to scoop that out too.




These pics are on moving day. Thats why is it still so clean.

 

[ChickenMammX4]

Cool setup @ChickenMammX4
. Can I ask if you had the ramp originally? Or was it added to help the chickens get down from the roost?

The ramp has always been there.

 

[kie4]

I made some adjustments to the sloping poop board.
Every day I go to the coop, and do the following:

1. Scrape down any poops that didn't roll to the bottom.
2. Lift poops on the far side over the divider.
3. Lift poops into pot
4. Throw poops in compost

I removed a section of the divider, but it still acts as support. This way I don't have to do #2.
Then I took a hole saw and drilled a 2.5" hole in the corner closest to the door.
Added a support bar on the high side for the board to rest on (before it was just wedged against the floor on the left)
Added 2 stacked pieces of 2x6 to give it some height on the left.
Left the pot under the hole.

The result is a higher poop slider with less gradient, but now chickens can walk underneath.
The new process is as follows:

1. Scrape down any poops into the hole.
2. Throw poops into compost.

The nipple waterer needs refiling every month or two.
The PCV elbow hanging bucket feeder needs refilling every month or two.
The only daily activity is poop clean up, so I'm happy to have this improvement in place

 

[kie4]

 

[aart]

So how's it working out?