I dread giving the chicken coop a thorough cleaning, which I do twice a
year, but not because it’s a dusty, wet, messy job. I clean four cats' litter boxes and scoop poop from the coop every morning, so I'm no stranger to messy jobs.
The thing is, I just hate having
to lock our three hens outside while I remove all of the bedding from
the coop, scrape off any fossilized deposits,
scrub the floor and spray the interior walls with a water-and-vinegar
solution, wipe the floor with rags to remove any excess liquid, and
then wait for everything to dry out before adding fresh bedding and
reopening the coop. But like it or not, yesterday was the day. The whole shebang took a good 90 minutes or more from start to finish.
Snow, Nellie and Hope did not approve of this ritual. They never do, partly because they aren't big fans of change. And if they're ready to lay while the coop is temporarily closed to all traffic, they can’t get to their nest boxes, which are in the coop. That means they have to “hold it,” which I believe they can do for a short while, or drop their cargo outside, in the pen or under the raised coop.
Either way, once the coop has been reopened, I have to stage a one-man egg hunt outside, to find out if any of the hens was desperate enough to embrace a change in venue while the nest boxes were off-limits. I came up empty-handed during yesterday’s search, which was a good thing. In the past, the hens have been known to lay in inaccessible spots when denied access to their boxes, forcing me to jury-rig a retrieval gizmo that lets me reach and role a wayward egg without breaking it.
Trust me. That's easier said than done. We're not talking hard-boiled eggs here.
Snow, Nellie and Hope did not approve of this ritual. They never do, partly because they aren't big fans of change. And if they're ready to lay while the coop is temporarily closed to all traffic, they can’t get to their nest boxes, which are in the coop. That means they have to “hold it,” which I believe they can do for a short while, or drop their cargo outside, in the pen or under the raised coop.
Either way, once the coop has been reopened, I have to stage a one-man egg hunt outside, to find out if any of the hens was desperate enough to embrace a change in venue while the nest boxes were off-limits. I came up empty-handed during yesterday’s search, which was a good thing. In the past, the hens have been known to lay in inaccessible spots when denied access to their boxes, forcing me to jury-rig a retrieval gizmo that lets me reach and role a wayward egg without breaking it.
Trust me. That's easier said than done. We're not talking hard-boiled eggs here.
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