There's so much to be done today. First off, I cleaned the chicken coop. I had to chase the chickens out of the coop into their run and you've never in your life heard such a commotion when I shut the door to their coop. Trust me! They took it personal. Oh they whined and pecked at the door and even tried to fly through the window, that was closed mind you! They never stopped whining and crying the entire time I was inside cleaning my heart out. When I let them in it was like a day at the fair. Mercy they cooed and gurgled and had a great time inspecting every little nook and cranny. I then went out to the herb garden and cut a big bucketful of herbs and cut them up so that I could spread them around in the coop and nesting boxes. Obviously, this was definitely "Christmas" for them. I half expected them to get down and roll!! It's always awesome when I do the Fall and Spring cleaning. The chickens really do appreciate it when I clean their coop. It was not only necessary for me to clean their coop as to cleanliness purposes but I needed to lay down some pine shavings and then straw on top of that.
During the winter I use the Deep Litter Method which is actually the old timer's method. The first layer is pine shavings then straw on top of that. You go in and turn the top layer over and what the litter(shavings and straw) is actually doing is slowly decomposing. You keep turning it over and laying down more straw over a period of time until you have around 12 inches of litter in the coop. Just continue to keep it turned over and by Spring when you're ready to clean the coop out you have wonderful compost material to put on your garden. While all this is composting it is also releasing heat thereby keeping your chickens warm as well. You don't want the litter to be wet or smell of ammonia and if it does - get it out immediately and start over. You can't have that!!! I used this method last year and it worked very well for me. In fact, each night I would go out and throw cracked corn to my chickens, because that will help their bodies warm up too, and in the process of scratching around for the cracked corn they actually turned the litter over for me!!
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I just finished making sausage gravy and biscuits, fried eggs and sliced tomatoes for supper. Pretty doggone tasty!!!