I hauled out three wheelbarrow loads of straw just from the top layer I could rake up. Then I start digging. I think I went a bit overboard with this “deep compost” thing, or maybe it just doesn’t work well with straw. I’ve got a lot of soggy, compacted and half-rotted straw, which probably absorbed one helluva lot of nitrogen from all that chicken shit, but the chickens can only turn over so much of it.
This goes 8-10 inches down and some of it has been here for five years. Fact is it’s gotten so deep, so gradually over the years, that the hens are finding it difficult to get under the coop to get out of the rain. Without better turning, I wouldn’t say any of it is really properly composted. Now I need to dig it all out, and I would like to requisition less windy weather, please.
The coop is holding up quite well, all things considered. None of the doors droop enough to matter. The ramp needs to be re-wrapped or I need to do something else about traction, and I do wish I’d done a double door for cleaning the damned thing out. Also, I’d like to request that the next batch of hens not insist on shitting all over the roof. But there’s no real repair needed since the last time I tried to re-invent the nest box.
I scrounged a whole bunch of hardware cloth which may be enough to go all the way around the yard and possibly discourage rats. The camo net top cover is almost two years old and holding up nicely, I’m happy to say, but there are a few adjustments I can make. A bit of an alteration to the prop pole. Bit of an adjustment to the gate. Lots of little things like that, most of which I’ve been putting off, infinitely easier without the drama of working around a bunch of freaked-out chickens.
The one alteration I wish I could make, which is to tear half of it down and rebuild it bigger, is not in the cards. I can’t expand it where it is, with the cabin on one side and the drainage ditch for a whole gully on the other, and anywhere I relocated it would be either very unlevel or too far from the cabin for safety. So far I haven’t lost a single uncaged chicken to predators, and I want to continue that record into the future.
BTW, in case you wondered so far Seymour is doing fine in with the main flock. So far. I’ve got my eye on him.
