Holly chicken poop

[seinemutti]

Hiya, we decided to raise chickens for our family to have fresh organic freeranged eggs, and for sweet pets.
I bought two of them as day old chicks and they started laying around Nov(?). They roam our relatively big urban back yard, and recently I swear their poop production has skyrocketed! They poop everywhere. I'm out there searching and scooping every other day for about thirty minutes. So I have some questions and concerns. We have a 2 year old toddler who can't keep him hand out of him mouth lately, and is also always touching the ground for some reason or another. My concern is what is he touches part of the ground where a chicken poo was or is and in his mouth the bacteria goes! Also, fly populations seem to be escalated now that we have new chicken poo tartlets all over for them, we fill up those fly bags, I mean FILL UP, in a week! It's insane.
So I'm curious how yawl manage your chicken manure. I like to throw it in the compost after I collect it. But rather than letting them poop all over the yard I'm considering making them a ~100sq' section of grass that they can frolic about in and only letting them in the rest of the yard rarely and when in diapers.

But if I did, do you have any suggestions on what to put on the ground? Or should I just leave the grass? Or perhaps you have alternative better ideas? TIA!


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[aart]

Yep, about the time they get big enough to lay, the poops greatly increase in size.
One of the reasons I keep my birds confined to run is because I don't want chicken poop all over everywhere.

If I had a toddler, that would be another good reason.
Tho exposure to 'germs' can build good immunity, but there's some limits.

Leaving the run in grass is good...until the grass is gone which can be very quickly depending on several variables.
Then you might need to consider putting something else down depending on soil, water runoff, etc.