A Peak Inside...and some more Outside

Last weekends activities and posts have lead to some questions that some of this weekends activities and pictures should help answer. Some people were a little confused, and rightly so, in thinking that the 'winterizing of the coop' project showed all of the 'coop'. Really, all that was shown was the run. Rest assured, the ladies aren't relegated to braving our Canadian winters or polar vortexes outside surrounded by a few bales of hay.

This week, among many other things, we took the hen house down to bare bones to give it a good cleaning before winter. We also flipped the door so it opens outwards and put in some boards that will allow us to start using what is known as the 'deep litter' method of dealing with chicken waste.

Here are some pics  to show what we've done....

Removed all the old litter and scraped down all surfaces.

Here's there little sliding drop door to the run. It's connected to a cable that can be used to raise or lower it from outside the coop. We had all the girls stay in the run for the duration of the cleaning.

A heat lamp was left by the previous owner for use with chicks. We plan to keep it around for those super cold days we see every so often.

 Added a couple of plastic nesting bins for testing purposes and started refilling with pine shavings.

Nests packed with straw, pine shavings and golf balls

We removed one feeder that just kept getting filled with poop. The ladies will have to learn how to share this one until the big remodel comes in the spring.I have some big plans for the reno so stay tuned for that!

By the time we're done adding shavings we should have 8 inches or more on the floor, hence the boards across the door. Karen or I will do a write up on the deep litter method in the future for those of you curious about chicken poop (I bet there are tons of you lol).

We also managed to get some more work done outside....

Strawberries covered with straw.

Veggie garden tilled. This one earned my dad the 'Helping Hand' award. Not only did he get a beat up old roto-tiller I found on the side of the road up and running, he dropped it off, and after showing me how to get it going he decided to do the whole thing. Guess it was more fun than it looked!

That'll be all the pics for now. Don't want to use up my whole month of bandwidth in just one day! However, please feel free to leave any questions, comments, queries or concerns!