Muddy coops, what a mess

[lorrir]

I live in SC where we got 4 inches of rain Tuesday and a half inch today.

My coops are so muddy I had to let the the birds out to freerange in the rain. It wasn't humane to leave them in the run. The turkey coop had 3 inches of mud in it. The tarp over the Peafowl pen collapsed. ( I did such a good job putting the tarp up it didn't give but the chainlink dog kennel frame did).

It's going to take a week to dry everything out. I've never had this kind of flooding before. Gosh I feel so sorry for the birds. I never leave them out over night, but I can't pen them up with condtion the pens are in. All I can do is pray.

Besides the mud problem, my husband has moved the three cows we have to the pasture that the the chicken coop is in and the cows stand at the coop door mooing over the cracked corn I put out. One day soon all of my coops are going to be knocked over by the cows, trying to get to the corn.

 

[gsim]

Find some pallets or scrap wood of any type or even pine branches and set them in the coops to give the chooks some dry footing. In a few days you will want to take it out to prevent mildew, which is really bad for chooks. Plan your next coop for this so it is never repeated. Hope no preds come calling tonight.

 

[Catstar68]

I feel your pain. With 7 inches or more of rain predicted for our area in NC today through Friday, I'm worried. The pen is a muddy mess. The coop is elevated but the girls insist on being outside during the day. This morning they were all under the 4' overhang but the dry area under there will eventually become a mess too. I think the poor things will just have to weather the storm like everyone else since free ranging during the day in the yard is not a safe option. I don't understand why they want to be outside when they have a lovely 8' by 6' coop with lots of windows and perches.

 

[darkmatter]

Before I enlarged my run, I solved the muddy run problem by getting truckloads of woodchips from the electric coop. They were clearing trees from the lines and chipping them up and just disposing them. (greenhouses and nursery's didn't want the chips cause they were mixed trees and sizes) The chips worked good for me for the chicken run, garden paths, and orchard tree mulch.

 

[JimWWhite]

We took an old 18'x21' carport we had and put our coop inside of it and enclosed it with chicken wire and made a gate, etc. We layed down about two inches of crush 'n run (sand and gravel) then about three more inches of creek sand. The sand seemed to do the trick. When we had our hens up next to the garage in a run it was just a bog. I added sand to it and that worked but tarps just weren't the answer. Every time it rained we had a mess. Now that they are under the hardtop of the carport things are much better and they're feet are dry. It's a lot easier to clean too. Plus they gals are a whole lot happier!

 

[savingdogs]

We have tarps over our chain link dog run style run, but since we live in rainy country this isn't good enough. We have slick, icky mud throughout the run even if I add shavings or dry matter every day.

I am thinking of putting sand down because it is just so dang icky, hoping that does the trick. But we are getting muddy eggs and all the chickens are muddy and miserable looking. They still run around happily enough but they can't like being all wet and muddy. Their coop is warm and dry but they never hang out in there unless it is really dark clouds and hard rain.

 

[wjallen05]

We've had so much rain and flooding in GA this year, I've actually had chickens drown in their old pens. We just build a new coop and we have that problem solved. Though, their runs get super muddy when it rains, that's just unavoidable. We got 10 inches on Tuesday and a couple more yesterday. I designed the new baby pen with the coop up off the ground just so they can get out of the mud. It's so weird since we didn't get ANY rain for the last three years... now it won't stop!
Good luck