Poop hammock-not going to work

[chicChickChick]

Tried it out this week. The smell is horrific and even with daily emptying I’m afraid the fumes might be too much for the hens. 19 birds

Anyone find a way to make this work? The two roosts are six feet across and about 48 and 56 inches in height. I’m not excited to fabricate poop boards.

 

[NatJ]

Tried it out this week. The smell is horrific and even with daily emptying I’m afraid the fumes might be too much for the hens. 19 birds

Anyone find a way to make this work? The two roosts are six feet across and about 48 and 56 inches in height. I’m not excited to fabricate poop boards.

Is there a reason to have anything special under the roosts?

You can put bedding on the floor, and let the poop fall there. Either scoop it up regularly, or add more bedding and clean it out less often (large amounts of dry bedding can usually keep it from smelling bad, although that can change depending on the climate, the amount of droppings, the kind of bedding, and a few other variables.)

Having it fall to the floor means it is farther from the chickens, instead of being right underneath them. Depending on how the ventilation is arranged in your coop, sometimes that makes a difference in how much smell actually reaches the chickens, and sometimes it does not.

 

[aart]

Why? It's not hard.

We who have years of experience and the tools gathered along the way,
forget that others do not have those things.

 

[DobieLover]

I’m not excited to fabricate poop boards.

Why? It's not hard. And they work very well.

Mine are covered in zeolite and I scoop them daily. No smell and no fumes. It is very bad for a chickens delicate respiratory system to breath in ammonia fumes. If you can smell it, the concentration is way too high.
How much ventilation, in square feet, is in your coop? Can you post pictures? What size is the coop?

 

[Kiki]

Poop board or the poop falling and collecting on the floor...either way you will have to pick it up.

I agree with @NatJ Let it fall and just use a shovel to scoop it in to a bucket every few days. I'd not wait two weeks to pick it up though.

 

[NanaK]

Do you own any tools? Do you have any family members or friends that have tools and can help?
All you need are a few 2x4's or even 2x3s, some plywood or OSB, 3.5-4" screws and 1.5"-2" screws to construct a poop board. A chop saw, power driver, circular saw and a 4' level.

Some big box hardware store will make some cuts for no charge. They often have reject lumber much cheaper than A grade.

 

[NatJ]

I tried nothing beneath and thought the smell and mess built up too quickly. 19 birds ( five are bantams) in 6by13 coop with two big TSC bags of compressed shavings and by the end of the second week it was stinky. The girls spend most of their time outside too.

When I had 4-6 hens in much smaller quarters per square foot it wasn’t so smelly

Large amounts of poop certainly can require different management than smaller amounts.

You have 3-4 times as many chickens now, so you might need much greater amounts of bedding, or more frequent cleaning, or both.

 

[rosemarythyme]

Poop board or the poop falling and collecting on the floor...either way you will have to pick it up.

I agree with @NatJ Let it fall and just use a shovel to scoop it in to a bucket every few days. I'd not wait two weeks to pick it up though.

x3. Might want to look into hemp as it's more siftable. If you sift out poop daily you should only need to refresh it on occasion and probably can reduce full cleanouts to maybe 1-3x a year depending on how dry the bedding stays.

 

[Kiki]

A poop board can be as simple as piece of wood laid across two stands to hold it up.

 

[Kiki]

Because I don’t know how.

Do you have more milk crates laying around?

You could stack a few on each side, under the roosts, and lay a board across them.