Yep, deep litter is a good system, too, and not
that much more management, but it's still more than deep bedding. I haven't tried it myself. I work full time and have two young children, so I'm trying to cut down on any unnecessary additional labor with the chickens. Any time I have left for them I want to spend just hanging out with them, interacting and enjoying them
Deep bedding can be cleaned out once a year, too. To me, the difference between once or twice a year isn't that big, so I like to give them a fresh restart twice. The low heat isn't important to me. They sleep 4 feet off the ground and the minimal heat won't reach them, and during the day they don't spend any time in the coop, so they won't benefit from that heat. Plus, it doesn't get
that cold where I live - occasional dip to the 20s or teens, never anywhere near 0, so the chickens don't need additional heat.
As for the compost, it doesn't matter whether I put it in the garden now as poop shavings and they compost over winter, or if they compost in the coop and I put them in the garden in the spring. It's the same amount of labor for me, just different times of the year. What does matter, however, is that if I clean the coop out in the spring and put everything in the garden, not all the poop will have composted evenly, and it will span months in age, with the freshest on top still being actual poop. That's not good to put in your garden, and there's no good way to separate fresh from old, since the chickens will have scratched it all together. What people usually do is after they take the deep litter out of the coop, they put it somewhere else to finish composting so it's safe to put in the garden. Maybe not for as long as the un-composted dry bedding, but it's still an additional step, and additional space, that adds more work to this method. It's not worth it for me.
You don't need a poop board with either method. For deep litter, you'd want the poop to fall down so it can get composted. You could try a poop board for deep bedding, and that can extend the time between full coop clean-outs, but those are already once or twice a year, rare enough where it won't make a big difference. But a poop board will add more daily/weekly work for you to scoop it. Which you might be fine with. Me, like I said, I want to cut down on any unnecessary labor, so I don't want a poop board. It's been working out great for me without one, so I'm happy.
I have thick branches for roosts, on 3 levels in a ladder-like fashion. The tallest one is 4 feet off the floor and 1 foot from the wall, the rest are spread somewhat evenly between the tall one and the floor in terms of vertical space, and horizontally they are about 1 foot from each other, to give the chickens room to maneuver. Some chickens can fly 4 feet up and don't need intermediate branches, but I have heavy, lazy breeds that are poor flyers and they really appreciate the intermediate branches for getting up and down. Also, they like to spread out and hang out at the different levels of branches in the morning while waiting for the auto door to open.
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I am about an hour north of you.
