Good Day to Clean the Chicken Coop

70 degrees!
And tomorrow night the low is expected to be 17  :-(

But today is Sunday … plenty of time to enjoy the sunshine and the warmth. The perfect day to clean the chicken coop! AND the perfect day to prepare garden beds, spreading that good stuff that comes out of the chicken coop. My raised beds are getting old. We add mulch and other organic matter to the beds every year, but they seem to be getting "tired". I'm hoping a little potent fertilizer from the chicken house will boost crop yields in the long run.

We have a pile of manure that's been "cooking" for 6 months. It has broken down and now looks like dirt … rich, black dirt. I spread that between the rows of the greens that are currently growing under cover. (lettuce, spinach, tatsoi, kale) Then I mixed some of the composted manure with a bin full of wood ash, ratio 2:1 chicken manure:wood ash and spread it over the asparagus bed.

I scraped accumulated manure out of the nesting boxes, from under the roosting perches ... and from any other flat surface the chickens have been pooping on … mixing it liberally with the straw that we use as litter to cover the floor of the coop and all other surfaces. The girls came into the coop right away to check out the proceedings.

I spread this rich mix on currently empty raised beds and used it to mulch the blueberries and wineberries. I finished off the asparagus bed with a layer of the straw / manure mix, too. One of the Dominiques couldn't resist playing in the straw-filled wheelbarrow.

We use straw as litter, but there are other options … and other products to avoid. Here's an interesting article about what to use as litter in the chicken coop:  http://www.fresh-eggs-daily.com/2012/08/straw-vs-shavings-my-choice-for-coop.html