Poop board- pros vs cons.

[LaFleche]

For me poop boards are a must as they help to prevent the proliferation of mites, fleas and other pests and in addition give the opportunity to better monitor the chicken's state of health (worms, diarrhea, egg drop syndrom etc.?)

 

[Flockincrazy]

I planted mint and lavender around my coops and runs it gets rid of mites ticks fleas and I have fly bags and venous fly traps for Nats

 

[LaFleche]

I do have lavender cuttings in the bedding and nests and still use a poop board.
But compared to others, I do have quite a lot of chickens resulting in a lot of droppings every night which I can easily scrape off the poop board every morning.

 

[RojoMarz]

I like poop boards. I do have pine shreding/mulch on the coop floor. I really like being able to walk in the coop w/o a small chance of stepping in poop. If I didn't have the boards, I'd have to somehow try and get poop out of the shreding/mulch and mix in the remaining.

Since adding my poop boards, I have not needed to mix up the shreding/mulch. I scoop the poop board (which has PDZ on it) each day, in about a minute.

 

[blackdog043]

I use a poop board, it keeps my coop free of flies and doesn't smell. I scoop the board every morning when I take fermented feed out. The poop goes into my compost pile. It takes about 10 minutes of my morning to do this. My poop board is 12' x 24" for 22 chickens. I add a few hand fulls of pine shavings to my bedding every couple months. I've cleaned my coop out three times in 4 years. The old bedding goes into the compost pile.

 

[Alaskan]

I have poop shelves, do NOT clean them every day, and still love them.

I have switched to lining the shelves with feed bags. When the poop is a pretty solid layer, gently pick up the feed bag, pop off the poo into the wheelbarrow, replace feedbag (or grab a new one).

In the summer, clean more frequently or use PDZ. In the winter... never any smell, too dang cold.

And, in winter, when the poo immediately turns to frozen poo concrete, the feedbag means I can still slide out the poo covered feedbag, the poo cracks off in sheets, feedbag gets replaced.

The floor of my coop looks great, stays great, and is clean. Wood chips fluffed up on the coop floor stay in great shape. Floor is cleaned about twice a year.

 

[Finnie]

I have about 40 birds now and we are probably going to be adding every year till we get 100.

I would hate to have to scoop 100 chickens worth of poop out of poop boards every morning. Miss a few days and it becomes a REAL chore. Alaskan’s “pop it off the feed bag” method sounds promising. I might try that instead of PDZ for my poop boards. My dream coop would have a dirt floor and I would use BeeKissed‘s deep litter compost method.

 

[DaisyG2317]

For me poop boards are a must as they help to prevent the proliferation of mites, fleas and other pests and in addition give the opportunity to better monitor the chicken's state of health (worms, diarrhea, egg drop syndrom etc.?)

hadn't thought about the boards from a monitoring perspective, thanks for mentioning it! I'm going to add them to my coop

 

[Compost King]

If you are a daily cleaner and keep everything Spic and Span then I see no cons to Poop Boards. I prefer the poop pile up and I layer bedding frequently until I need it for composting. Not sure if its a pro/con thing as much as its a preference thing. I like Poop Boards but it doesn't fit what I do.

Some advantages to poop boards that people over look... you can put feeders, water, nesting boxes and brooders under them. They save space. I especially like the idea of putting a brooder under poop boards because it allows for easy integration. If the brooder is not in use its a great isolation box for new chickens you introduce to an existing flock. It won't pass for a quarantine space though. I have put nesting boxes under poop boards and that worked out great too. I can't say enough good things about poop boards.

 

[DoxonFarms]

Thanks everyone for your opinions. Gives me something to think about.