waterer

Brothers M. MiM ’24 – Did It work – Week3

Jason Brothers M., Chicken, Coop, Equipment, Infrastructure, Pastured, Poultry , , , , , ,

Brothers M. Mondays in May(MiM) is our tradition of sharing our excitement about our chickens every Monday in May.  This year’s Monday’s in May focus on Did it Work? We’ll look at some of the things we’ve done and give an update on how well it worked.  This week is the portable coop floor.

For the portable chicken coop, I wanted an easy to clean floor.  I started out with a solid board with a laminate top so that I could easily scoop it clean.  This worked OK, but it was hard to get a shovel at the right angle to do a good scrape, it required cleaning often, and to really get a good clean I had to pull the board out, and it was heavy and unwieldy.

Floor

Then I went to a mesh flooring using 1x.5 inch wire, which I don’t have a picture of.  This didn’t work well at all, the .5″ was too small and droppings wouldn’t fall through.  And since stuff piled up, it wouldn’t clean easily by brushing with a push broom and needed cleaned by scraping with a shovel.  This one also had a 2×4 that went the length of the trailer that covered a support bar and 2×4 supports that spanned width.  These also caused droppings to quickly build up.  I did make some improvements by notching the frame where it was binding and cutting the width a little shorter so it slid in and out much easier.  Below is the next iteration, but you can see the center board and notch.

Floor1

Then I switched to a 1×1 mesh on the same frame and replaced the 2×4 that went the length of the trailer, pictured above.  I also replaced the 2x4s that spanned the frame with 2x2s.  This worked pretty good.  The chickens seemed to have no issues navigating the bigger mesh and more stuff fell through; however, the center bar that runs the length of the trailer, directly under the long 2×4 that I removed, would still get piled up quickly.   But mainly it was just the amount of poop a chicken does at night while on the roosting bars, which are over the long center bar, that caused problems keeping it clean.  Poop piled up and was quickly above the floor.  This floor was easier to clean with the broom, except for the areas where things backed up from below the wire mesh.  Then I had to pull it out and use a shovel to scrape it and clean off the center bar too.   Still not what I wanted.

Floor2

The current iteration happened by chance.  A piece of the wire mesh under the perches rusted and I didn’t want to deal with it in the winter time, so I threw a heavy board over it.  During the next couple cleanings, I realized that I might be on to something.  I cut a long narrow board that just sits under the perches; the heavy poop area.  Now, It works really well to pull the board out and scrape it off and the rest is usually easily cleaned by a push broom.  I added some straping to the end of the board on the bottom to give me an easier way to pull it out. I’ve been using this for a few months now and it’s looking like this will be the solution I stay with.

Floorstrap

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Brothers M. MiM ’24 – Did It work – Week2

Jason Brothers M., Chicken, Equipment, Infrastructure, Pastured, Poultry , , , , , ,

Brothers M. Mondays in May(MiM) is our tradition of sharing our excitement about our chickens every Monday in May.  This year’s Monday’s in May focus on Did it Work? We’ll look at some of the things we’ve done and give an update on how well it worked.

Today we’re again talking about waterers and it’s less of a ‘did it work’ and more of a ‘what works for us’.  I’ve been eyeballing the plastic 5 gallon waterers for a while now wondering if they’d work better for us.  Well this year I needed one and the only kind my favorite farm store had was plastic so I got a chance to try one out.

Waterers

The metal dual wall waterers are traditional and well proven.  They are also super convenient to fill with a 5 gallon bucket because the opening is so large and all you have to do is pull the top cover off, I only twist and hook the tops when I’m carrying them empty so it’s easy to pull straight up when filling.  However, they are a bit harder to clean, I use a small kitchen brush to clean the trough.   They are also more cumbersome to carry when they have water as you have to take the top cover off and carry them by the sturdy inside handle.  They have a “plunger” that prevents water from flowing out, but some always seep out anyway and will overflow until you can replace the top cover.

Metal

The plastic waterer is easily carried by the handle on top and there’s a small cap that you place over the bottom hole to prevent water from coming out as you carry it or while you are filling it.  The bottom tray comes off, so it’s easier to clean too.  Filling the plastic waterer is more difficult as the lid/handle is hard to unscrew, at least for the first little bit.  The hole is not very wide and the flow of water from a 5 gallon bucket tends to be wider than the hole and harder to hit.  You also have to place the small cap over the hole to prevent losing water while filling, then return it to the top where there’s a convenient place to keep it.

Plastic

What made the decision easy for me happened the second evening.  I was relaxing in the house and started questioning if I had removed the black cap off the fill hole.  I went back out to the field only to confirm yes I had done it right.  SO…  I know how forgetful kids are, and this was just a recipe for disaster.  With the metal waterers,  I’ve never questioned whether myself or my kids put the covers back on the waterer.  A big metal cover is just too obvious and much harder to miss.