Poop Scoopin' the Chicken Coop

Lyn's chickens are great pals on the farm. They are a documentary on farming all by themselves. And like all free-ranging producers on this farm they have little time to pick up after themselves. Chores define themselves by the inability of our captive farmlings to clean up after themselves.

Chickens were our first farm critters. We've enjoyed their company on this farm for two years. Lyn is the "Chicken Mama" and I help where I can without being in the way. We started our flock in Spring 2008 with 25 day old chicks ordered from L & M Supply in Detroit Lakes. "Chicken days" each spring is a local ritual. a time to order new and replacement chicks. Going to town to see many kinds of the chicks at L&M Supply is fun. Watching the little kids squeal and jabber about the chicks and ducklings is worth the 32 miles drive.

We have culled numerous roosters and some hens since our start in Spring 2008. We wanted a mixed flock of about a dozen hens and one rooster and have that sized flock now. We were gifted some adult birds from my cousin Cookie that first year and worked to incorporate them into the flock. We kept some of each type of chicks we first brought home. Today we have Australorpes (2), two goldstars, five buff orpingtons, one California white, a barred rock, a rooster of unknown decent, probably a California white, but who really knows. Sophie is a mix of types from my cousins gift flock. She lays a pretty blue-green egg and loves to hatch eggs. She recently incubated four eggs and kept them warm this winter for five weeks old before she wanted back into the main flock.

There have been several coops for the chickens. An ice fishing shack used by our friends the Volt's for many years of ice fishing on Lake Bemidji worked well for a year of so. The Summer of 2008 we housed our future laying hens and our first 'meat' chickens or "broilers" in homemade 'tractors' that we skidded around the farmstead yard. This was 'free range' enough for us with our first flock of chickens. This approach all ensured they had plenty of greens and insects as grew and matured.

The layers have graduated from the Ice Fishing Coop to a stall in our garage. The 12 foot by 6 foot coop we \erected in the garage is a perfect place to keep chickens in the winter. I cut a little door for them in the garage wall so they can go outside anytime they see fit during daylight hours. The Ice Fishing Coop is insulated but our winters are nasty here in Becker County, Minnesota (latitude 37 degrees, longitude 98 degrees). We didn't feel comfortable leaving the chickens to occasional minus 30 degree weather. We stacked straw bales around the Ice Fishing Coop last winter and skidded the coop to the south side of our garage, but it still frosted their combs a little even with a heat lamp going all night near their roost. The decision to move them inside is better for them and makes clean-up and feeding/watering chores much easier for "Chicken Mama" Lyn.

The current housing for the hens and Swede the rooster involved building an enclosure in the southeast corner of the south stall our of our three car garage/tool shed/nursery/rabbit hutch/coop. The rabbits and chickens get sunlight through the south windows and we use some multi-spectrum lighting to enhance that light in winter. We store chick starter or layer/grower feed in a metal rack. We found some "recycle" plastic bins that work perfectly for 50 pound sacks of feed and other sacked nutrients, such as diatomaceous earth. Lyn manages to keep straw bales and wood chip bedding dry in this stall area as well. Rabbit pellets are kept in 30 gallon metal garbage cans. We've made places for miscellaneous tools and supplies on shelves, a work bench and a movable cart.

So far everything is working quite well. Instead of occasional temperatures way below zero, the rabbits and chickens live in 20 to 40 degree above zero temperatures in the garage-barn stall space. The rabbits are more comfortable even though they weathered outside quite well last winter in the hutch I made and surrounded with stacked straw bales on the south facing side of the garage.

Chickens are amazing in their ability to go scratching about the farmstead in the dead of winter. Usually it takes temperatures of about 20 above to get them fired up, but if the wind is not blowing up their 'skirts' they will take a stroll almost any sunny day that presents itself. Throw a little scratch outside their coop door and wait for them to stick their heads out, test the air and file out to roam about. Normally, they head right toward the house where bird feeders are located to scratch up seeds the birds drop. If the temperature drops a bit or the wind picks up, they line up and make their way back to the 'barn', always surveying for one last morsel to stash in their crop before entering the coop.

I hope this gives you a look into the learning process we are going though managing chickens on Blue Moo(n) Farm. I'll post more on these wonderful farm critters in the days ahead. Be willing to raise chickens if you get the chance. Our farm would be fairly lackluster and humorless many days if it weren't for the antics of our paranoid flock of chickens. Oh, did I forget to tell you about cleaning out the coop poop.

Well, I'm sure this picture of Lyn on cleanup day is graphic enough to imagine that chore. It really doesn't take that long and the manure makes great compost. More on that in future posts too. Until then, Keep looking for the green as spring approaches.