Monday chicken projects!
Happy Monday, y'all! Monday is project day on the homestead, just like every other day. Don't forget to enter your projects in my SBI contest a few posts back!
This cold wet weather is awesome. And messy. Today started with noticing a bunch of water and mud in the little chicken run. Easy fix, and a good starting point for our trenching project!
Starting point: water and mud
The tarp on the big chickens worked well. It displaced a lot of water from their run to the little run, which was a mess. It also collected many dead caterpillars of the venomous variety. No bueno.
So I took everything out of the run and dug a trench along the area where water was standing. I diverted it out the run under the wood frame. As @goldenoakfarm pointed out, holes under the frame can provide an entrance for predators, so I filled that spot with gravel. Permeable by water, and blocks the hole.
Then I added a bunch of bedding. I've been adding pine shavings whenever I change their coop bedding, but I'm unable to keep up, and it gets yucky fast. So it was high time for a whole lot of pine needles and grass clippings. I was saving those for the hugelkultur project, but this is another worthy cause that is more urgent at the moment. I don't know if chickens get trench foot, but it can't make them happy to be living in cold mud. Poor girls.
The rest of the project was conpleted after dark, so there's no pics. Ill have to make a second short post with steepshot in the morning, cause its some significant progress. I added a tarp and a plate for their feeder and waterer. Itll be part of a more comprehensive system for them that'll include automatically watering with rain water. I'm pretty excited about it.
Final step: add chickens!
They were apprehensive at first because they've never been on bedding this deep. I threw in some meal worms to bribe them, and they scratched in the bedding playfully. Quite rewarding to watch, and I think it'll help them this winter.
The big chickens also got a lot of new bedding. Their deep litter is composting super well, and I think the new bedding is just going to enhance that. They love scratching and digging in it all day, so I think the little chickens are going to pick up on it quickly by watching. Soon they'll be big enough to all live together as one flock. An exciting notion that I'm anxious to adopt!
Hope y'all had a safe and productive start to your week! I'm going to spend some time with Melissa and a warm ACV with honey before work.
Stay relevant
Nate
P.S. Farmer Sam was inspired by the drainage ditch and started one of his own. Exciting to see the kid learning and trying some of these projects on his own. It'll also help with the whole system when we get it going.
howdy there nateonsteemit! great job of saving those chickens from having a cold, wet place to hang out, doesn't sound healthy so the fix has got to be good!
Oh yeah, they're nice and happy and warm in there now. They seem to love it in there.
They will love that deep bedding. Normally I collect a LOT of dried leaves from the community by now. But with rain every other day, there's no dry leaves around. Not sure what I will do for bedding in the run, if the rain doesn't slow down...
Love Farmer Sam's drainage. :))
They seemed to really like it today. They were perfectly content to stay in their run when I offered to let em out in the cold rain lol
Could you use hay for bedding? Surely a big round bale wouldn't be wet all the way through, would it?
Using hay exclusively for bedding is not good. Hay is something they would try to eat and you run the risk of impacted crops. It's ok when mixed with lots of other things. But mostly, any hay I find, goes on the gardens as mulch. I need about 200 bales a year, to keep my worms fed. :))
Lots of hungry worms is exactly the best kind of problem :D
I'm thinking about finding a farmer with some year old hay and asking for some. My hay farmer friend at work says that may be quite the task though, as it's been a hard couple years for hay farmers around here. I figure if I had a few round bales I'd be doing alright for mulch and such.
Impacted crops is where the chicken's weird throat thing gets plugged up, right?
The crop is where the stones/grit are and the grinding of food happens. The chicken form of teeth/chewing. Not so much plugged up, as the material in it can't be broken down and becomes packed in.
Around here it's been bad hay years for several years either due to drought or too much rain. It's real hard to find mulch hay for free...