Poop board— liners, yay or nay?

[ChickenMamaC]

My husband thinks we need to buy liners for the poop board or cover it in line shavings. I say you’re supposed to just scrape it off every day.

What say ye? Liners or no need?

 

[snow5164]

Nay, never heard of liners? I have sand on mine to absorb the very wet poop!! I have left it with no sand and it’s really hard to clean it up.

Stall dri or PDZ? I think it’s called have drying compounds to help dry out the poop .

Hope that helps a little ....

 

[Ridgerunner]

You are both wrong or maybe both a little bit right, depending on how you want to look at it. You will find that people do it all kinds of different ways.

Some people use some type of bedding or lining on the droppings board. That can be sand, PDZ, wood shavings, wood chips, straw, hay, grass clippings, dried leaves, practically anything. I use bare wood. Some people do not use them at all.

Some people do some kind of cleaning daily. Others may do it weekly or some other regular schedule. I scrape mine when I need to. That might be weekly if I have a heavy chicken density and the weather is pretty damp so it doesn't dry out, that might be once every six weeks with a low chicken density and dry weather.

Chickens poop a lot at night and since they are not moving around, it can build up pretty thick and stay wet. If it stays wet it will probably stink. That's what I want to avoid. Over the years I've learned when I need to scrape it to avoid stink.

Some people use sand or something so they can scoop the poops out and keep them from building up. Some use a bedding of some type to absorb the moisture so they don't have to clean as often.

If you take pure poop off of there it works great in your compost. If you change out a lot of bedding you need to dispose of it somehow. That volume can build up if you have many birds. It usually does not have enough poop in it to compost very fast so what do you do with it, send it to the landfill?

 

[snow5164]

Also if you don’t do daily cleaning the chance of flys (which lay eggs and you end up with maggots )is so much greater , also mine walk in th poop so I clean each and every morning

 

[blackdog043]

I have a piece of linoleum on my board and have 1/4 - 1/2 inch of Sweet PDZ on top of that. I scoop daily to keep the odors down and chickens from stepping in it, if they walk on the board. I throw the poop in my compost bin. PDZ also helps keep the ammonia smell down in the coop, which is not good for the chickens.

 

[pintail_drake2004]

I put some old linoleum on my board then put 2-2.5" of sand and dusted Sweet PDZ on top. I clean out the sand a couple times a week. and totally replace 1x every 6 months.

 

[aart]

I have a piece of linoleum on my board and have 1/4 - 1/2 inch of Sweet PDZ on top of that. I scoop daily to keep the odors down and chickens from stepping in it, if they walk on the board. I throw the poop in my compost bin. PDZ also helps keep the ammonia smell down in the coop, which is not good for the chickens.

I have and do much the same...except it's vinyl rather than linoleum.

@Ridgerunner covered all the variables and options nicely.
Boils down to... how do you want to manage the manure?

 

[blackdog043]

except it's vinyl rather than linoleum.

Mine is actually vinyl, gotta stop saying linoleum.