What are your favorite tips for a tidy coop?

[gettinaclue]

I agree with painting and earth tone if you must paint.

As far as scrubbing frozen poop>>>I would think using a putty knife would help, but I don't scrape poop boards, so I'm only guessing.

 

[patandchickens]

A putty knife won't help when the poo is frozen really tight to the board.

If one is going to use heat tape under the droppings board to prevent freezing, I would hope it is at least a tape made to be attached to things like that, not standard plumbing heat tape which must ONLY be installed around WATER-FILLED PIPES and only exactly as per mfr's instructions. People free-lancing with heat tape burns down a *lot* of houses/barns/coops every year... just because it is ok for a while does not mean it will continue that way as the tape and its attachments age...

Pat

 

[kuntrygirl]

I have a few raised open air coops, so my tip for a tidy coop is to place hay on the hardware cloth wire floor so that the poop can fall on the hay while the chickens roost. When it's time to clean the coop, I remove the hay and then there is minimal cleaning. A few balls of poop may fall on the wire floor while removing the hay but other than that, there is really nothing to clean. It takes me no time to freshen up. I do spray a mixture of water and bleach on the wire floor just as a precaution.

Pic of 1 of my open/air coop's floor before putting the hay down.

 

[new chick 203]

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The thing I use is heat rope which is made for pets. much safer and about the wattage of a 25w bulb.

 

[elmo]

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I have a raised coop with a pop door that opens like a drawbridge and forms a platform that the chickens can fly up on to enter the coop. When we had young chicks, I just added a branch roost in front of the coop drawbridge so the little ones could fly up in two steps, sort of like a ladder roost. I wonder if you tried some arrangement like this, rather than the ramp, if you'd see less poo accumulation on surfaces?

 

[teach1rusl]

Well, it's never THAT cold inside my coop, but tossing some bedding up there (on the dropping boards) really makes clean-up so much simpler. I usually grab a few handfuls of the finer stuff laying at the bottom of my coop floor to toss up there. Even in warm weather it's great - absorbs liquidy wastes.

 

[True Grit]

I gave up on the poop board as I only have a 4x4 coop so now I just pick up the poop off the shavings every morning. Frozen is good!

 

[serendipityfarm]

I have horses and we use pelleted beddding. So I tried some in the coop. Water it down and it becomes sawdust. I layer the poop board with that, and sift off poop daily with a cat litter scoop.

 

[Newbie in Screamer Al]

Your right on moving the roost further away from the wall. I have not had that problem. On the poop boards, I got 18x18 inch stick on vinyl tiles cheap from lowes, and stuck em on the poop boards for an easy scrap with the litter scooper. I do not have the freeze problem here so I am not sure about the feasability for you. But I would think the vinyl will work. My ladders are just plain wood, and although staind, I still scrap the bulk off the same way with the scooper. They do not seem to mind the stains,LOL Good luck.. R
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[TinyLittleFarm]

Newbie in Screamer Al, :

Your right on moving the roost further away from the wall. I have not had that problem. On the poop boards, I got 18x18 inch stick on vinyl tiles cheap from lowes, and stuck em on the poop boards for an easy scrap with the litter scooper. I do not have the freeze problem here so I am not sure about the feasability for you. But I would think the vinyl will work. My ladders are just plain wood, and although staind, I still scrap the bulk off the same way with the scooper. They do not seem to mind the stains,LOL Good luck.. R

Yeah we had the vinyl stick ons for a while. Once everything froze I think the glue failed. They're gone now. Once our freezing weather is over I'm throwing out our current poop boards and redoing the whole set up and I'm going to do the boot trays with something inside them. Shavings or sand or whatever. I can't believe I didn't think of that before this winter!