Washingtonians Come Together! Washington Peeps

[Hinotori]

I let everyone out to free range regularly, but they have large pens for the rest of the time. Main pen with large fowl is 8x15 coop and 15x35 pen. Dirt floor inside that stays dry so I deep litter. I use shavings only inside coops.

The runs get straw regularly. I don't do anything with it. Tons of earthworms in there and with the chickens digging through the straw, it breaks down to soil pretty well. The ground in there is about six inches higher than it was when I started, so even though it was a low spot in the yard then, it's not now.

I had a 10x15 pen in the garden for a couple years. Just moved it recently and am getting ready to plant there.

 

[Hinotori]

I have nets over pens to keep my birds in. 6 foot isn't anything to one that can fly a bit. They will flap climb their way up the chainlink if they aren't good flyers.

 

[pennyJo1960]

I have nets over pens to keep my birds in. 6 foot isn't anything to one that can fly a bit. They will flap climb their way up the chainlink if they aren't good flyers.

I did the same, there is chicken wire mine is 8 ft tall
but put a wire top to keep the birds from flying out. We are plotting a new run
of pcv pipe and wire curving the pipe over half circle style.
I use shavings 7.49 a bale at dels mine are white as pine is more expensive

 

[Gatewayto]

Mine are 5 weeks and sit on their perch for relaxing time, but when they actually want to sleep, they all fight for a spot in the corner of the brooder. The ritual takes about 30 min and is quite noisy. Once settled, they puff up, and the mass of them rather resembles a Tribble from Star Trek.

Mulling over whether I can let them free-range the backyard when I'm at work. We have a 5ft privacy fence that keeps out dogs, but IDK if these guys will keep an eye out for hawks or decide to fly out and visit neighbors.

At 5 weeks the chicks maybe too small still to be out unsupervised. At two months our 4 chicks where screaming their head off when a hawk landed and tried to get in their run. Currently they are 3 months and we let them out unsupervised, haven't seen the hawk returns.

As far as the fence, our chicks doesn't seem to be interested in the fence line at all. One of our chick, "Snowflake", likes to stand on top of things and is able to stand fly to the top of our coop which is 6 feet.

Our chicks wings are not clip. Wife doesn't want their wing clip and I couldn't talk her in to clipping them yet.

 

[junebuggena]

Caught my 8 month old cockerel sparring with his own shadow! Hilarious!

 

[Gatewayto]

<-- I would place a mirror in on the ground for him heheh

 

[Duck Drover]

I just hose my run down when it gets really gross, the poo breaks up and dissolves into the soil. If you want, you can deep litter the run. Use straw, hay, grass clippings, pine needles or anything else compostable. Deep litter doesn't work too well in coops that aren't sitting on bare dirt. You need the microorganisms in the ground to really get that deep litter composting. Otherwise, it's just deep bedding. Or you can cover the dirt with sand or gravel, for easier hosing down. I'm less than a mile from the beach, so the soil here is practically like straight sand, no need for me to buy more to cover the run.

I also hose the poop so it soaks into the ground and feeds the worms instead of feeding flies. It eliminates smell and acts as fertilizer. Composting needs water to break down the organic matter but the wet shavings or straw is far more smelly as it decomposes. Straw also grows mold and that can be highly toxic. Breaking down the poop with water eliminates it by allowing it to soak into the soil.

We have a sandy and rocky soil with a very nice topsoil. Keeping the ground clear of bedding material has allowed the rain and regular hosing to break down the poop but it also helps to have a large enough area for the grass to grow because then the grass also benefits from the nitrates and the birds keep the grass mowed.

I used shavings in an area under the nest boxes (we collect eggs from outside the coop) to keep it from getting muddy but the wet shavings caused more problems than the mud so I will never use shavings outside of my planters, where I want mulch to hold the water. When I hose our mud, it breaks down the poop but leaves the topsoil over the sandy soil and it dries quickly.

I have worked on getting rain run off to spread and soak into the ground instead of forming puddles and that has helped keep areas that were once muddy from staying muddy. The worst mud is from decomposing leaves preventing the rain water from soaking into the ground when we get lots of rain so we have started raking up leaves instead of leaving them on the ground. We used to think the leaves would make the yard less muddy but what I have learned is clear ground is less muddy.

The grassy areas are the easiest to maintain so now I am working on getting the grass I destroyed with my landscaping work to fill back in. Having the birds eat the grass actually encourages it to grow faster and root more but we do section off areas where we need more grass to grow in order to allow it to seed and take root before letting the birds eat it down. I have allowed mulch to pile up at the base of our trees and bushes to hold in moisture after the drought we had last summer but the grass will eventually cover those areas too.

As long as the mud is kept clean of poop, it is not going to be smelly so I have found using water to thin down the mud and liquify the waste allows the liquid waste to flow through the soil and keep the topsoil clean. Raking does not allow the layering to occur and it would tear up the vegetation, which is the most beneficial means of eliminating mud.

When birds are confined to a small area, hosing may not work as well. We use shavings in our coops and they get replaced every two weeks with the dirty bedding going out as yard waste. I would prefer to compost them in order to use the mulch but it takes a long time to break the waste down in compost bins so we just compost our grass clippings (we have to mow our front yard) now.

We used to compost our dog poop (we have 4 dogs) with the grass clippings but that did not work out so now we use green cone composters that allow the poop to decompose underground and fertilize our apple trees. We hose out our dog pen after removing the solid waste so the broken down poop fertilizes a bush next to the pen and it also fertilizes our blueberry bushes on the other side of the pen. Dog poop takes longer to break down than bird poop but it also feeds the worms and vegetation. The water used to break down the poop is also good for the vegetation so it is a method that takes less time, energy, and resources to keep a healty ecosystem.

It may take some time to build up a healthy worm population like we have to eat up all of our poop but worms reproduce like crazy in favorable conditions. We also have 3 worm bins and a raised strawberry planter to grow worms in and we use our rabbit poop as worm food and fertilizer as well.

 

[pennyJo1960]

Caught my 8 month old cockerel sparring with his own shadow! Hilarious!

I actually gave both roo's to the gal we buy milk from, we have become friends over
the last few months called her we had missed picking up milk yesterday all
the stuff with my Mom so I asked if she wanted them said why not.
WWWWWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

[Duck Drover]

They can harm the little ones but I have never had it happen yet.  Mostly just as you said they eat the food and poop in the food potentially spreading disease and increasing your feed costs exponentially as the rat population explodes around you with access to unlimited feed.


The best protection against rats in my experience is making sure to secure your feed while chickens are sleeping.  I keep the feed in the coop itself which has a closing door and no gaps that are big enough for a rat to fit through (1.5" roughly).  Before i made the coop door close at night, I had a big rat problem. 

 
My buddy took a different approach with a stand on chicken feeder, meaning when the chickens go to get food they stand on a lever that opens up the feeder for them to eat.  Rats would be both too light and too small to activate the feeder AND have access to the feed. 

My husband built a stand on feeder out of wood and it worked pretty well for adults. We stopped using it when we had mixed ages to feed. The younger birds can eat when the feeder is opened but they would get chased off.

We use PVC pipe feeders that can be capped off to close them but we keep ours open day and night because the ducks eat before the chickens come out of the coops and after they go to bed. I have the chickens and ducks separated now and I need to make more feeders but capping off the chicken feed may not be effective for me if there is feed available in the duck feeders. I think it is a good idea for a flock that does not need access to feed at night when rats are out and they are cheaper and easier to make than the step on feeders.

 

[Duck Drover]

If they want to they can clear a 5 ft fence but if you clip one wing's flight feathers they shouldn't be able to once they are adults.

My birds can fly up to the top of my 8 ft coop if I don't clip feathers on one side.  I always know when they finish their molt or re-grow wing feathers because one of my birds likes to fly up to the roof of the coop and announce she has finished laying her egg!

We have trees around our fenceline that deters our chickens so none have ever escaped our 5' chain link fence but the ducks have flown over the house when their flight feathers came in between roundups. We normally clip twice a year but with keeping ducklings through the Spring and Summer last year we had to do monthly roundups.