I watched a video that said to put the waterer on a tuna tin, and that has really helped me. I didn’t have a tuna tin, but I have a plastic lid that I sit it on.
As the chicks grow, I’ve been moving them to a larger brooder, I’m now at my largest, a 50 gallon bin. The more surface area they have to spread the poop, the faster it dries. I also tried the deep bedding method, but mine dig constantly, probably because I sprinkle some crumbles around for them to forage haha. They dig and kick, and stick poop to the walls of the bin. At their current size, 9 days, I can go about 2 days between changes.
Also worth noting is that I have a heat plate not a light, so the deep bedding is a hassle with taking out the heat plate, raising the legs etc. I think the heat plate is more relaxing for them, because when they get scared they hide under it, the lamp brooders look so open and scary I think, so I’d rather change bedding every few days and have them feel secure. I’ve also worked with enough animals in the past that I feel like poop heated and dried by the lights gets more powdery, and it might be in my head, but I feel like I smell the chalky poop more than when it just falls on chips and dries naturally. The chicks mostly go to the edges of the plate to poop, and the plate doesnt radiate heat, the whole brooder isn’t a poop oven.
I really expected the smell and mess to be worse, I had a Congo African grey for several years and the 19 chicks in a bin definitely are less mess and smell than he was in a cage that like 3 people could fit in at once.
In summary, raise water, don’t heat the poop, that’s my 2 cents.
Poop machines and they literally turn their waterer into a dirty, mushy, quail Jacuzzi (even with the marbles in there).
