Mucked Out the Coop Today

[swampducks]

Twelve inches of deep litter str:/aw, leaves, and chicken and guinea poop in a 6 by 8 foot coop. Boy was that fun! Still this is the first big muck-out since the coop was finished last summer. Was a little difficult scraping around the edges since the guineas have been hiding eggs along 2 sides. In fact every time I took a break a bunch of them would run in and move thing around then panic and run back out when I got back to work. I think they appreciate the new straw they can bury their eggs in now though. At least they'd better!

 

[Cats Critters]

Good job, now want to come help me

I've been slowly getting mine cleaned out one or two wheel barrows a day, in a couple days (probably Saturday), I will be done!

 

[Mr. Frizzles Hen House]

What are you doing with the muck? Garden? Share your method please

 

[Kansaseq]

So would you say you are happy with the DLM? How bad was it to muck?

 

[jnjross]

i would welcome muck, i got soup

.it just won't stop raining

 

[Judy]

Quote:
Poo-straw soup -- sounds Oriental -- yuk. Got it here too.

 

[swampducks]

How bad was it to muck? Ah, it wasn't fun, it probably took less than 2 hours total though I took quite a few breaks because my back protested, that sturff is heavy! And when I dug into it sometimes the ammonia smell was a little overpowering.

Now the coop before then didn't smell, I figure the reason it smelled when I dug into it was because last fall I still had over 50 birds in a 6 by 8 coop, way more than it should support. (This was due to an insane number of guineas when some losses were "over-replaced" by the hatchery.

) That's more poop than would normally accumulate over the winter.

My DLM is a base of sand on top of hardware cloth so nothing can dig in from outside, followed by dried leaves and then I added straw every week to freshen things up. Used to drop a foot into the coop from the door and over the last 6 months the added straw and poop made it pretty level with the door sill.

I scooped out the straw/poop/leaves mixture with a spade fork and a long handled claw and threw it into a pile outside the door. It's not getting rained on.

After a few weeks outside I hope to till some of it into my veggie garden. Since there was still an ammonia smell I am sure it's still too strong for the garden right now. Not that I've planted anything yet, still a lot of snow out here (and more coming this weekend, WAAAAAAH!)

I hope I've answered everyone's questions. Oh yeah, I added fresh straw after I was done.