I am planning on building a rather small raised floor pen, and I needed to know - Is it better to put a plywood floor with linoleum and then pine shavings, or go with a rabbit hutch style bottom with wire mesh with shavings on top of it? I know the shavings will fall through the wire mesh some, but would this stay cleaner than a solid bottom?
It depends on how small and how high it will be...small enought that you don't plan on getting in it and you can easily shovel under it...I would go with wire bottom...if you are gonna get in it go with solid and then you can shovel and sweep it easier...by the way...there are several types of shavings and some are in large enough flakes they won't fall through for those cold times
I'm in south Louisiana, cold weather not an issue. I was planning on elevating a 12-18" inches just to get above any standing rainwater. As far as size, its gonna be 2 or 3 separate pens about 4' x 4' x 4'.
Whatever you decide for the floor, make a trap door in it so you can slide a wagon underneath the coop & rake all the poop & straw right down into it. I wish I had done that in my raised coop...
We are in North Texas so floor is natural soil. Coops are built with a 30% elevation grade with channels for excessive rain fall. There is plenty of ventilation designed in so the "floor" stays dry From what I've read by searching here you would want a non slippery flooring. Ours is as close as we can get to out of coop conditions as we can get but dry. We also dust the "floor" with DE regularly. As stated above, you also would need a way to clean under and also with a wire floor your joists would likely build up excess that you could not clean easily with wire on top. Maybe you could raise the grade level of the coop foundation and channel the water flow around your coop and lower your initail and upkeep costs.
Quote:I'm not getting the point of putting shavings on wire mesh. Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of wire mesh, which is that droppings can fall/be hosed through for cleaning? Also I can almost guarantee that on a windy day the shavings would blow ALL over, like a snow globe If you are in a hot climate that never gets cold, some people do wire mesh floors (I don't like the idea of them but I gather chickens pretty much cope) --- but BARE, nothing at all on them, the only bedding used is in the nestbox. For all other situations, I'd strongly recommend a solid floor. With or without vinyl flooring, that's your choice, but definitely a solid floor. (And of course shavings or other bedding on it). GOod luck, have fun, Pat
