Dog and cat owner so my thought is scoop it out every day. Some say don't worry about it, chickens are the ultimate recyclers, some say no problem with deep litter method. What say you?
It depends greatly on your setup. A larger space can be cleaned much less often. The poop will dry and sift down into the litter. With a large coop and deep litter especially on dirt, once a year is not unusual. Most prople probably schecule their cleanings by odor.
I'm so new to chickens that I wonder about poop boards above which are roosts. Seems like poop boards, well, keep poop in more of one area? But then I have no idea about chickens poop habits. Deep litter for when they come and go, eating and pooping during the day?
The majority of poop that a chicken puts out in 24 hours is at night on the roost. Lots of people use poop boards as a convenient way of removing the majority of the poop in one relatively easy operation. Something like a scrap of countertop makes an ideal one, easy to scrape off -- just pull itout, scrspe into bucket or wherever, replace.
this is a great idea. also, a lot of people will put a rim around the poop board and fill it with sand and sweet pdz and just go out every couple of days with a kitty litter scoop and a bucket. it doesn't have to be very deep at all
Yep, roost board with sand and PDZ sifted clean every couple days, poops go to compost. Kiln dried large flake pine shavings on floor, start with a couple inches on floor then add as necessary, totally changed out spring and fall and sent to compost.
We have a poop tray under the roost filled with sweet pdz, which I scoop each morning. The roost is painted, so any poop that happens to get there overnight is wiped off with bird cage cleaner. I clean the rest of the coop daily because I like to sit in there with them. They free range during the day, so I don't worry about them not building immunity. If they were confined and I didn't sit on the floor of the coop, I certainly wouldn't be so thorough.
I clean the poop board every day. The coop itself is being managed in deep litter method (DLM) and I will probably strip it out in the next month - having moved the birds in and started this round of DLM last April/May. There is no odor and no "dirtiness" to the coop.
The poop on my poop board finally "defrosted" the other day after a long, cold winter. I had to use a shovel to clean it all off. I couldn't even tell that I had put an inch of sweet PDZ on the board in the fall. In the next week or so, I'll do the Spring Cleaning...rake out all the liter, throw it in the compost pile to put uin the garden in the fall, and start with fresh shavings. I put 3 bags in my 8 x 12 coop and then another bag every 2 months until the next cleaning.
