Spring Chores

Here are the little girls in their new digs. You can see the partition that my husband put in. The bottom half allows the big girls to see the littles, and the top half allows me to go through and gather eggs.


Well the photos ended up being in reverse order, but thats okay, why not start with the finished product ? My dear husband was good enough to help me with the spring chicken chores last weekend. I am still not able to lift much weight, and therefore couldn't shovel out the coop. Bless him, he did it for me. I use the deep litter method of chicken coop bedding, which is basically adding and adding the shredded paper and wood shavings mix all through out the year. This allows a deep layer to build up for winter. The smell is almost non existent since the shavings absorb the moisture. It worked so well this winter when the temps were very cold for very long, the girls did great.

But, it does leave a good 8"-12" of shavings to be shoveled out and composted in the spring. So.. shovel he did. He then built a partition in the big girls coop so that the little ones could vacate their over crowded studio in my kitchen, and move into the manse. He put chicken wire on the bottom so that the big girls could see into the area where the littles live. This will allow them to become accustomed to the littles and hopefully not give them too much of a pecking when they finally all live together. Chickens, as sweet as they are, can be like teenage girls in high school.

Here is my husband working on the partition, and Goldie peeking in to see whats going on.

This is my son Garrett, he is stealing the hinges from the old A-Frame coop to use on the door of the partition. We needed a door as I had to get to those eggs somehow! I love how Elsie is watching him here, the curiosity of a chicken is really amazing, especially when you think of the size of their itty bitty brains!

This is inside the coop. Mike is moving the nest box down to make room for the littles. My coop is 4X12 and could accommodate 24 chickens at the 2 square foot per bird rule. Beings that I have long winters here though, I prefer to give them more than that.

And here is my lovely hubby layering the compost in the piles. This is what was left over from the rabbit and chicken poo! The majority went straight into the garden beds to cook for the month or so left before planting! I have lasagna garden beds and will be talking about those in my next post. They are amazing, and you can grow SO much in just a small space!