Poop catching trays

[melalthia]

Hi y'all.
More questions if you dont mind.

Poop catching trays under the perches.

If you were redesigning your coop, would you include them? If you have them, do you like them? Do you find them a hassle? I'd be interested in all opinions regarding them. What do people generally make them out of?

All opinions and advice welcome!
-m

 

[freemotion]

Saw a picture once of a cool poop-whatever, not really a catcher per say. They put a box-like structure under the roosts with wire on top, maybe hardware cloth? And a door in the back wall so they could remove the poo without going into the coop. Nice.

I personally love the deep-litter method, if the coop is big enough for the number of birds and you spread whole grains on it, they will turn it nicely. Not the least bit stinky. Of course, I have an insatiable need for good compost, so I also love a method that gives me more, more, more!

 

[aiwetir]

droppings board is what most call them i believe

 

[ChanceRider]

I have them and I love them. It's SO easy to clean them out and keeps the coop litter cleaner for a longer period of time. I use pine shavings and a liberal amount of DE. I start out with a thin layer of shavings and DE, and add more shavings/DE as needed, then toss the whole thing when I'm doing a cleaning.

This is a pic of my nest boxes, but you can see the poop trays above the nests. I have 3 boxes that run the full length of the roost.

 

[VT Chick-lit]

I have 4 hens and use 2 boot trays under my roosts. I clean them daily by taking a small handled garden hand hoe and a dust pan. I scrape the droppings into the dust pan and then dump them into my now empty garden. It takes me less than 2 minutes a day to keep the coop clean. About 95% of the dropings land up in the tray and so the litter on the floor stays quite clean.