yes!
while I did use a dilute bleach solution to spray everything I could in the donated coop and run --- I let it dry thoroughly first, in the sunlight, and then I PAINTED it (and of course let the paint dry) before I let my chickens use it
DH and I hauled two more of the ore troughs across the yard this morning .. one more to go -- it still needs to be bailed out after the rain the last couple of days, but we can get to it more easily now, that the one which was butted up against it, is out and away
I was going to fence in the run as an 8 by 8 ... however since I discovered there were FIVE of the eight foot troughs, I think it is going to expand to a 16 by 12 if not a full 16 by 16 -- depends on how far I want to cut back the Indian Plum bushes that it will impinge upon
(we have 50 feet of fence wire to play with ... plus the chicken wire we can salvage from the existing donated run; I plan to buy 50 feet of hardware cloth too, for doubling up the lower part of the run fencing)
three of the ore troughs have no drainage holes in the bottom, so I am thinking of planting Himalayan blackberries in those, since the roots of those nasty spreading things can NOT go through a full inch of resin (which is what the troughs are lined with) -- and the blackberry canes should discourage most of the larger predators here --- we have LOTS of blackberry shoots available -- DH cut down a fifty foot swath of those a couple of weeks ago
then as they grow upwards, I can interlace them to make a pergola type roof above the chickenwire netting
I found the old tomato cages that I used to use to grow snow peas on ... so at least one of the drainage-hole-equipped troughs will become a raised vegetable / flower garden ... I might even be able to raise carrots (in this glacial-till soil, they won't grow ... can't go down and won't grow outwards)
that may be more work than I want to do, but it's an idea, and if it doesn't work we can always chop them back down
