Spring Cleaning the Hen House and New Perches

Nice clean coop with new perches <3

It rained for days. A steady heavy soaking rain. I thought it would never end and was getting ready to start building an arc! Thankfully the rain finally stopped and the sun came out. I am so thankful to see the sun! The animals around the homestead are too. The chickens and turkeys have been happily clucking away and looking for bugs. They have been soaked and pathetic looking for days. I am always inspired to get things clean and new after long rains. The rain cleans everything outside and makes it new, so it only seems fitting.

The chicken coop is mostly water proof, but it has large windows to help cool it during the miserably hot summers here, and so when the wind blows the rain comes right in. I use the deep-litter method. I clean the coop out about twice a year and then just add pine chips when needed in between cleanings. It works wonderfully! Because pine chips are added fairly frequently, the chicken poo dries up and there is no smell. The only time it smells is when it gets wet, which it definitely did over the last few days. It was nice to get it cleaned out.

Compost out of the bottom (ground) level of the coop.
My garden will LOVE this!

I don't go all out when I clean the coop. I don't spray it out or use cleaners. Chickens poo and it tends to get on stuff. That's life. Moisture is what makes it icky, so I don't like adding more moisture to the system. I also don't like using chemicals in my own house because it isn't healthy, so I don't see why I should use them out there either. I use vinegar to clean out the feeders and waterers periodically, but that's about it. My chickens are happy and healthy, so I assume I am doing a good job. I push my wheel barrow over to the coop and use a gardening hoe to pull the shavings out into the wheel barrow, which are then emptied into the compost pile. When I am done with the top of the two level coop, I shovel out the bottom level. The bottom level is directly on the ground. The chickens end up scratching a lot of the pine shavings down to the bottom level, which start to decompose because they are in contact with the dirt and all of the wonderful microorganisms living there. I end up with some beautiful compost! My garden will love all of this black gold!

After all of the shavings are cleared, I use Hi-Yield to dust the inside of the coop. It can also be used directly on chickens, pets, livestock, or veggie plants. It has the same active ingredient as Frontline and kills pests such as lice, fleas, and ticks. Like I said earlier, I don't like using chemicals. I feel better about using this than Sevin-Dust on my animals though, which is what many people use to rid chickens of lice. I put it in a sock and plop it around on the floor and the walls and then cover it with fresh pine shavings. It is also easier to dust the birds like this. I have heard of putting a chicken in a bag up to its head, putting some dust in the bag, and then shaking it. It cracks me up just thinking about it. I prefer to shake-n-bake my chickens when I am eating them, not when I am dusting them. My roosters would never forgive me for embarrassing them like that in front of their ladies!

I took out the automatic feeders that I built last year. Water kept getting inside of them and molding the feed. I much prefer the round red feeders. The chickens and turkeys can all gather around it at the same time. More feeder space with less space taken up by the actual feeder. The automatic feeder had apparently looked like a good place for a momma mouse to have babies. The chicken and turkey hens got them the second I moved the feeder. I hate to kill babies but I don't want mice living in my chicken coop and apparently the hens were fine with taking care of that problem for me. I put a thin layer of pine shavings back in the bottom and filled the top up. Much will be scratched back to the bottom level, and I will keep adding more to the top. It will be cleaned again in the fall when I start getting everything ready for winter.

While I was working in the coop, I decided it was a good time to add the perches that I have been meaning to add for ages! Because the new hens are going to be added to the hen house in the next few weeks they will need a place to roost. I thought about using 2x4s but prefer to give them something round. It seems like it would be more natural and comfortable on their feet. I raided my bonfire pit and cut up limbs that looked to fit the bill. I nailed a 2x4 onto the floor of the coop, approximately at mid width. Then using one of my favorite "tools" I zip-tied them together to form ladders. The 2x4 keeps the base of the ladders in place, but will allow me to easily remove them for cleaning. Einstein and a couple of the ladies were trying it out already when I went to check on them for the night. Hopefully the new girls will have plenty of room to roost when they are added to the flock!

While I am on perches, I never mentioned what I pulled together for the turkeys a couple months ago. They enjoy their roost too, which unlike the chicken roosts, is made of 2x4s. I basically made a saw horse.  I have had to reinforce it a couple of times because the turkeys are very heavy and once it starts leaning it topples over! Most of them enjoy perching on it at night, although some still insist on sleeping on the ground. Can't please everyone!