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How high are your roosts? What kind of droppings board are you using? There are lots of different ways to do droppings boards. How are you going to clean it? How close you put the droppings board to the roosts depends on how much room you need to clean it. In my opinion, you need to make cleaning it convenient for you. That’s important so you want to do it. Don’t make life harder for yourself than you need to.
How high does the droppings board need to be to be considered usable space for chickens? Not very but there could be other issues. One of the benefits of having more room is so chickens can get away from a conflict or avoid the more aggressive chicken to start with. Having a hiding place can be quite beneficial if things turn rough. My nests are pretty close to the coop floor. Exactly how close depends on how much bedding I have in there and how much they have scratched the bedding under there. When I’m integrating younger chickens with the flock the younger ones are often hiding under the nests in the morning when I go down to let them all out. Sometimes the young ones are up on my roosts while the adults are on the coop floor. In both cases they are avoiding the adults. Having tight space under my nests gives them quality space to avoid the adults.
This might be something for you to consider. I feed in the coop and use wood shavings on dirt as a coop floor. The chickens scratch a lot around the feeder to get the feed they drop onto the coop floor. I have an 8’ x 12’ coop. The shavings around the feeder are often pretty thin but they pile up around all sides of the coop, their scratching is that powerful. They don’t scratch under my nests or anywhere else around the edges of the coop so I sometimes rake those shavings back to the middle of the coop. I could throw scratch in those areas to encourage the chickens to clean them out for me but I don’t. The point is, depending on your circumstances, you may not have as much room under that droppings board as you think.
Another aspect of this is that the area under the droppings board might look like a safe place for a hen to lay an egg. This is the 9th year I’ve had chickens here. In that time it’s only happened twice, a hen decides under my nests is a good place for a nest. But my brooder is built in the coop and is around a foot to maybe 18” off the floor, depending on how many shavings are scratched under it. Several times I’ve hens decide that is a good place for a nest. I don’t know how many times, around a half dozen. These are almost always pullets just starting to lay, not established hens, and I’m always integrating new pullets. If you are not adding new pullets a lot this is probably not that much of a risk for you, but I do think you need to be able to see under there.
I’ll enclose photos of my nests and brooder so you can see what I’m talking about. There is more room under the nests than it looks like, they can come in from the sides and the back still has room. As you can see, it’s a great place for chicks to hide. But yes, it’s time to rake it out some.
Then the brooder.
I have no idea what your coop looks like, how big it is, your flock make-up, how you will manage them or really anything else that makes your situation unique. In my opinion you are probably better off putting your droppings board as high as you can while still making it convenient for you to clean it off if you are going to give them room to get under it. Whether or not you want to give them that extra room is your decision. It’s not always a clear cut decision. There are often trade-offs. I’ve gone back several times to modify my coop when things didn’t work out like I hoped.
Good luck!
How high does the droppings board need to be to be considered usable space for chickens? Not very but there could be other issues. One of the benefits of having more room is so chickens can get away from a conflict or avoid the more aggressive chicken to start with. Having a hiding place can be quite beneficial if things turn rough. My nests are pretty close to the coop floor. Exactly how close depends on how much bedding I have in there and how much they have scratched the bedding under there. When I’m integrating younger chickens with the flock the younger ones are often hiding under the nests in the morning when I go down to let them all out. Sometimes the young ones are up on my roosts while the adults are on the coop floor. In both cases they are avoiding the adults. Having tight space under my nests gives them quality space to avoid the adults.
This might be something for you to consider. I feed in the coop and use wood shavings on dirt as a coop floor. The chickens scratch a lot around the feeder to get the feed they drop onto the coop floor. I have an 8’ x 12’ coop. The shavings around the feeder are often pretty thin but they pile up around all sides of the coop, their scratching is that powerful. They don’t scratch under my nests or anywhere else around the edges of the coop so I sometimes rake those shavings back to the middle of the coop. I could throw scratch in those areas to encourage the chickens to clean them out for me but I don’t. The point is, depending on your circumstances, you may not have as much room under that droppings board as you think.
Another aspect of this is that the area under the droppings board might look like a safe place for a hen to lay an egg. This is the 9th year I’ve had chickens here. In that time it’s only happened twice, a hen decides under my nests is a good place for a nest. But my brooder is built in the coop and is around a foot to maybe 18” off the floor, depending on how many shavings are scratched under it. Several times I’ve hens decide that is a good place for a nest. I don’t know how many times, around a half dozen. These are almost always pullets just starting to lay, not established hens, and I’m always integrating new pullets. If you are not adding new pullets a lot this is probably not that much of a risk for you, but I do think you need to be able to see under there.
I’ll enclose photos of my nests and brooder so you can see what I’m talking about. There is more room under the nests than it looks like, they can come in from the sides and the back still has room. As you can see, it’s a great place for chicks to hide. But yes, it’s time to rake it out some.
Then the brooder.
I have no idea what your coop looks like, how big it is, your flock make-up, how you will manage them or really anything else that makes your situation unique. In my opinion you are probably better off putting your droppings board as high as you can while still making it convenient for you to clean it off if you are going to give them room to get under it. Whether or not you want to give them that extra room is your decision. It’s not always a clear cut decision. There are often trade-offs. I’ve gone back several times to modify my coop when things didn’t work out like I hoped.
Good luck!
It's not that complicated. My easy calculation is Depth of bedding + Height of adult bird + at least 4 to 6" to allow for a little hopping and stretching.
The bottom of my trays are about 25" off the floor of my coop and offer my standard size hatchery Buff Orps and Barred Rocks plenty of usable space.
Here's a pic.
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