December 16th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | Comments Off
Tags: Chickens, cleaning, DIY, eggs, mud, rain
November has been the first period with a lot of rain since I created the enclosure down the end of the garden, and the ground is starting to get very muddy! There are 2 problems with this: The first problem is that the chickens love to walk in the mud and then walk all over the eggs, which means the eggs get very muddy. The second problem is that when I try to clean the coop out, I nearly fall over in the slippery mud.
The best way to solve both problems would probably be to put down a load of woodchip in the run, but that will have to wait until next year. For now I have added this lovely board walk so that I can get to the coop to clean them out without sliding around in the mud.
Check out my lovely board walk!
The other thing that I have done recently is invested in a basket for collecting eggs. This is a little thing that has made a big difference to my cleaning / egg collecting routine. Before I had to collect the eggs, climb back over the fence with them (hard when you have 6 eggs in your hands) and put them inside. I would then go back into their area and clean up. With my basket I can do it all in one go, and I don’t end up dropping the eggs in the mud!
This is such a time saver
July 25th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | 1 Comment »
Tags: Chickens, cleaning, coop, feed, mud, netting, poo
When I got up this morning, Meg was fine and was scratching around as much as the other girls which was a relief.
I have recently realised that my setup is not working very well for me. One reason that I think I have got so heavily infested with mites is that the coop is virtually impossible to clean out in it’s current location – in order to get to the nest box I need to squeeze into a small gap between the coop and the fence, and I only have access to the rest of the coop from one side because of the netting at the back of it and the run at the front. Also, because of the nest area that I screwed into the floor of the coop, I can’t slide the floor out to clean it.
The run itself is also causing me problems: Due to the fact that it is so long and only about a meter high, it is virtually impossible for me to clean it. This means that over the past few months, the land underneath the run has turned into a bit of a swamp. As well as the vast quantities of chicken poop that have built up, I have had a problem with one of my feeders. When I moved the feeder into the middle of the run the weather was dry and it caused no problems. The girls like to empty the feeder onto the floor, but then over then following days will eat the pellets up so nothing is wasted. Since the weather has been so wet, all of the pellets on the floor have been turning to mush and being scratched into the floor and creating a disgusting smell. This means that the floor of the run has turned into a mixture of chicken poo and fermenting layers pellets and the smell is awful! They were also getting through twice as much food as usual so I have had to move the feeder back under the coop.
The final thing that I hadn’t really considered in my setup was convenience. Due to the fact that I have to move a load of flower pots, and squeeze under the netting to get to the back of the coop, changing the girls’ food has been a nightmare.
To fix all of these problems I have decided to have a bit of a move around in the garden. I am going to move the coop to the area behind the netting, remove the netting and the run and put up an electric fence. This will allow me to enter the chickens’ area and keep it clean, and will allow access to all sides of the coop for cleaning. This should hopefully solve most of my problems…
June 10th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | Comments Off
Tags: Chickens, cleaning, mud
Yesterday I decided it was about time I had a bit of a clean out in the chicken run. This is the second time that I decided to clean it out – last time I wanted to turn over all of the soil in the run but the ground was too hard. As it had rained yesterday morning, I decided to dig it over while the ground was still soft. It was a lot softer than last time but still hard work!
I turned over all of the soil in the run
When I had finished turning over the soil I put down some Stalosan F which is a powdered disinfectant that should hopefully keep the smell down. It took me about 2 hours to clean the whole run out but hopefully it won’t need doing again for a while.
It might not look tidy but you should have seen it before!
May 15th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | 1 Comment »
Tags: cleaning, mud, poo
Today I got home from work early and decided to give the chicken run a bit of a clean out. It was starting to get a bit smelly and after cleaning it out I can see why! I must have removed about a bucket full of chicken poo off of the floor. Considering the size of chicken droppings that is quite a lot!
I had to move the run out of the way to clean it properly which was a bit of a pain – it is very difficult to move it by yourself without breaking it. Before moving it I had to crawl in and pull out the pieces of wood that I put in there for the girls to climb on. When I was inside there the smell was terrible! Once I had got the coop out of the way I raked up all of the poo and attempted to fork the ground over a bit but the ground was pretty hard so I gave up on that one pretty quickly. I did manage to turn over some of the ground so hopefully the girls will enjoy dust-bathing in the loose earth.
April 11th, 2009 . Posted in Chickens | 2 Comments »
Tags: Chickens, mud, names
Today my Mum and Step-dad came to visit me so I had an extra couple of pairs of hands to help move the chicken run onto new ground. I got my Mum to distract the girls with some treats whilst Richard held a wooden board (the roof of the coop) over the end of the run and I moved the chicken coop. After that we all managed to move the run into position with the chickens still inside. The girls seemed pretty happy to have some new grass to peck (more like destroy). The patch of grass where the chickens used to be looks pretty disgusting now – especially when you consider that they had only been there for 3 days!
This is where the chicken run used to be!
As well as moving the run I have accomplished something much more difficult – with lots of help from my Mum and Yu Lee I have finally managed to name one of the chickens! The white one is now called Daisy!
Apart from that not a lot has happened but the girls are looking a lot more relaxed. Here is a picture of the girls relaxing in the run.
The chickens are settling in well