clean out the chicken coop.

Who would have thought chicken poop could be so, uh, massive? I clean off the roosts and such nearly every day and stir up the wood shavings on the floor. I also add shavings to the floor every few days – this helps with the smell as the pine shavings both smell good and absorb the dampness from the chicky-poo. Still, it needs a good scrubbing. It’s been a month since I bleached down all the food/water containers and such.

well it took 5 hours between TayLora and I but it is DONE!!!! It probably wouldn’t be so hard if the roof wasn’t so low, we have to bend over the entire time while standing as to not hit our heads, so both of us have a really sore back today. We built it that way so that the heat wouldn’t sit too high up and away from the birds in the winter when it gets -40 C. SO all cleaned, Dare has it stirred up into the compost (which is looking really nice btw) Took us a long time to chip out the brooding boxes – but guess what!? 3 fresh eggs this morn! YAY! Totally worht it, I am glad I pushed this goal up to the top of my to do things.. ;) I now have happier birds;)

this is a goal that needs to be done asap.. I hope to do it today!

We missed doing it in the fall and now that it is spring it is really really bad! I’ll be so happy when I get this done and I am sure the chickens will be too!

Not me, but at least it’s done!

...we tossed the rest of the eggs. Three were in different stages of development, one looked like it would have hatched in a day or two. Sad….but found another smooshed chick in the nest this morning and this cannot go on. We built a brooding coop this weekend (finally!!) and when we put the mama hen in with her babies (the four bigger ones) she kept calling to the rooster, he kept calling back to her, and then finally, she flew out of her nesting pen and walked back to the other pen and jumped back in with her friends. So…..we absolutely suck as chicken farmers. We don’t know what the heck we are doing, it is a little distressful.

one was smooshed by the mother before we could get to it, the other started panting and gasping for breath about 12 hours after it hatched and didn’t make it through the night. So sad. Heartwrenching, to be honest.

The boys are surprisingly nonchalant about these tragedies, as death-obsessed as they have been in the past. The four year old used to cry…shed real tears….for my grandmother who died when I was fifteen. The two year old still tells me every day, “I don’t want to die.” ...Which is what I tell him will happen when I find him doing things like, putting plastic bags over his head and unbuckling his car seat while I am zooming along at 70 mph on the highway. Two year olds are always skirting on the edge, playing with chance.

we have added five new chicks to our flock over the past few days!! They are SO CUTE….and I can’t believe how wobbly they are after first hatching…..and the difference between the oldest chick and the newest one. What a fun little event this has been. Kind of makes up for the couple of chickens my darn dog has mauled over the past three years….they are finally reproducing and swelling the ranks again.

A hazmat suit? I am thinking….gloves and boots (obviously…) but do I need a surgical mask? This will happen next month, just want to get prepared.