Main Coop – 3 days after putting down fresh bedding!

Here’s a little of what I’ve been up to this week:

This week gave me the perfect weather for doing a spring cleaning in the coop!  The first of the week gave us great spring-like temps, which is what I had been waiting for.  Our main coop was in desperate need of being cleaned out after the long winter.  During the winter, we have used a variation of the “deep litter” method, which is where you add fresh bedding on top of the “old” bedding periodically instead of removing the old and adding new.  This allows a bit more insulation in the colder weather.   We had already cleaned out from under the roost a few weeks ago, but, when the weather is warmer, we try to do it more often – about every 3-4 weeks.   And, it was just time to clean it out.  Since we had tackled the worst of it a few weeks ago, I was able to remove all of the old bedding in under an hour!  And, it was all moved down to garden area and spread out.  This is the really good stuff that is completely broken down & has very little “fresh” poo in it, so my garden will love it!

After all the old bedding was removed, I allows the coop to “air out” for a few hours, and my girls enjoyed several hours of free ranging! It’s so funny to watch them chasing after bugs at the beginning of spring.  I don’t think they touched their feed all day – just gorged themselves on lots of fresh, tender blades of grass & bugs!

This post is linked to:  Heritage Homesteaders Blog Hop #4