Question about slant boards

[MamaMandy]

I'm considering switching to slant boards instead of pans for some of my cages. I was wondering what is the best/cheapest material to make them out of? Also, I'd love to hear any pros and cons of using them. My rabbits are housed in a building with a pea gravel floor. I'd like to keep odor to a minimum. Any tips? Thanks in advance!

:bunnyhop:

 

[skysthelimit]

I have two types of boards. One using the tufex panels, these ones keep blowing off the dog kennels so I put them to good use. The other's are wood boards covered by the Tyvek feed bags, and those lasted all winter long, so I'm guessing I will change them every six mos.

 

[ladysown]

i use coroplast with mine. Makes for a sturdy area to scrap anything that doesn't fall off. Since they are white they show staining quickly. Over that though I put clear plastic (I change that out once a year).

I use gutters to catch the waste and direct it into buckets.

Pros: makes clean up a snap.
it's smooth which makes it really easy for liquid and most poops to run down into the gutter.

Cons: I didn't make mine on enough of a slant (due to space issues) so I do have to scrape them daily.
Coroplast is like plastic cardboard with ridges so I found that covering it with plastic (slopes from behind the cages down over the board) keeps an spray down and prevents leakage into the ridged area.

Inexpensive: has lasted me so far for almost 7 years.

 

[Wyldrose]

I have coroplast too now. I picked up some sheets at the re-store here. 4'x8' for $10/ sheet not to bad. So far so good and cheep to replace if needed. Easy to cut too.

 

[Marinea]

Mine are made of metal roof sheeting that slants down to a piece of gutter that leads to a bucket.

They work well, but I wish we had slanted them a bit more. They clean easily, I just use a hose twice a week. No noticeable smell.

 

[MamaMandy]

Thanks everyone! I'd love to see pics of your gutter setups. Do the gutters have to be slanted in order for the waste to drain to the bucket? Or do you have to rinse it out? I think it would have to be less time consuming than keeping pans clean regardless.

 

[Miss M]

I have moved since I had slant boards, and now have a different setup, but this is where you can find my slant board setup:

blogs/24carrot/2012/03/14/rabbitry-rehab/

We changed from corrugated tin to Coroplast.

In order to get urine and poo to roll to the gutter, you need an extreme angle. And then, you're not going to get it to all roll down the gutter. We had a gentler slope, and used squeegees on the slopes, and a brush or wisk broom in the gutters.

 

[Marinea]

Here is mine:

The gutter is slanted, and I put a bucket at the end. Most of the waste drains, but I hose it down twice a week. It is MUCH easier to clean than Boris' pans.

 

[skysthelimit]

My slant allows for the few pellets to roll down, after that, they start to collect--at one point the angle is so steep they go past the gutters onto the floor. I'm still working on that. There quite a bit of scraping. The gutters are only to catch runaways,mostly nothing goes in there unless I scrape it in.

 

[OneAcreFarm]

I have slant boards in my small shed, and for a while, it was ok. However, I have since decided that I HATE them...The poops don't all roll down, so you have to scrape/rinse the boards and the ones that DO roll down, some of them bounce out to the floor, so you have to sweep those up. If your gutters are not on an extreme angle, you will be scraping/rinsing them too. In a small shed, the smell does build up since most of the poop sits in the gutter and the urine drains to the bucket. In contrast to my outdoor setup, it is WAY more labor intensive and smelly. And it draws flies too... I plan to pull them out in a week or two and replace with the FlushKleen bottoms, since you can order those separately from Bass Equipment...

 

[Miss M]

Slat boards and gutters are, in my opinion, easier than pans. If you tend it daily and rinse often, it shouldn't be too difficult to keep it pretty clean. You can put peat moss in the buckets that collect the urine from the gutters, and that helps keep the smell down.

Like OneAcreFarm, I've got a single row of cages now. I don't have anything under the cages except a deep bed of shavings, which is slowly being mixed and composted (by the chickens we house with the rabbits) along with all the rabbit waste and chicken waste. By the time it's done composting (not to far in the future now), it will be garden gold. We'll shovel it all out and put in new shavings. So we'll have one or two stinky, laborious days, once or twice a year, with zero maintenance in between. And the chickens eat the bugs.

With a pea gravel floor, though, I don't know how you could manage a system like that. I think I remember somebody doing it, but it's been a long time... and I don't remember what they did.