Pics of our coop and run

[sn0wwhite]

Hi Chickiegrrl! How was your vacation? How did your chickens fare while you were away?

 

[chickiegrrl]

I finished the pop door & motor installation all by myself! I'm so proud! It's not perfect, but it works like a charm and the girls don't mind it at all!

 

[sn0wwhite]

It looks great! Do you have it on a timer or is it light sensitive?

 

[chickiegrrl]

It's on a timer. I'll have to adjust the time as winter goes on. I have it going up at 7am and down at 7pm. I also switched out all of the pine shavings for winter. I will NOT be putting DE in with my pine shavings this time. UGH! What a dusty horrible mess that was. I probably should have had a dust mask while I was cleaning it out. But, it's done and the girls are set for winter.

 

[sn0wwhite]

Yeah, I'm done with DE too. When I moved my coop 2.0 and saw how dead the ground was under it, that was concerning.
Did you switch the pine shavings for something else, or just fresh shavings?

 

[chickiegrrl]

Just fresh shavings. I had those shavings in before I put the poo boards up. I had mixed them with PDZ and DE. It worked great to keep the odor down and dried up the poop, but like I said, dusty mess to clean up. I'm hoping just pine shavings alone will be ok.

 

[sn0wwhite]

How deep did you go and how long did it last? I need to add more and am trying to decide how much. I actually picked poo out by hand today (gloves on) because I knew we'd be inside working on the electric and didn't want to step all over it.

 

[chickiegrrl]

I put down about 4-5" right now. I went to Tractor Supply and bought one of the big compressed bales. I used about 2/3 of it. After it gets moved around a bit by the girls I'll add the rest of the bale which will make it about 6" deep. I had put a full bale down in July with the DE and PDZ. I wouldn't have had to replace it. I think it could have gone all winter, but I had to crawl into the coop to do the pop door and some electrical, so I decided to just clean it out. I wanted to get rid of the PDZ and DE. It was really dusty in the coop when I would stir the shavings. I love DE in the girls' dust bath and I LOVE PDZ on the poo board, just not in the shavings.