For years now, we’ve had a serious egg surplus. It came from my chicken habit, and my husband (who collects the eggs) often had to say to me, “Honey, what shall we do with them all this time?”
And now that we’re breeding more chickens, our laying flock is increasing (since that’s where those hens who are not comely enough to be bred can still find a useful place at Storybook Farm).
We eat a lot of our yummy eggs. We have also sold them to friends locally, and given them away to family members. But this summer, I realized that our tiny town hosts a fledgling farmers’ market in good weather, and when I went down to check them out, they allowed as how they never had enough eggs!
The first hurdle was, as is so often the case, legalities. I consulted the WV Vendors’ Handbook. Here are the (lightly annotated) regulations I found:
A small producer may market up to one hundred fifty (150) dozen eggs (!) or less (that’s me!) per week of their own production.
The producer must register with the WVDA (West Virginia Department of Agriculture).
Small producers must label their cartons with:
The name and address of the person selling the eggs
The date the eggs are packed
The words “Ungraded Eggs” in print of at least 5/8″ high
Eggs shall be washed (removing their bloom, and necessitating refrigeration, whereas if we had not washed them, they would stay fresh for up to 6 months, but never mind).
Eggs shall be transported at forty-five degrees F, unless the time for transportation is less than three (3) hours. (Great! I only live 20 minutes from the market. š)
Eggs are to be stored and displayed at the Farmers Market in cold-holding equipment capable of holding forty one degrees F or less. The eggs must reach the forty-one degree temperature within four (4) hours of receipt at the market. ļ·(That cold-holding equipment was my cooler, and since our market lasts from 9 AM to noon, no problems here.)
Small producers are permitted to pack in recycled or used cartons when the distributorās name, address, expiration date, size and grade are marked out and replaced with the labeling required for small producers.
Cartons shall be clean and free of odor or debris.
Any vendor selling eggs shall have a valid Food Establishment Permit from the local ļ·health department before the date of sale. (Our county did not actually require this. Yeah; it’s almost heaven here! š)
It took me a couple of weeks to get all these ducks in a row.
I had to fill in a WVDA form and show it to our county Board of Health.
Then, I had to pay for a county permit ($15/year), which my county BoH discounted since we were at the end of the season. I paid $6.
After all that, there were only a couple of weeks left in the selling season, but we got up early to wash and pack eggs. Here we are in our PJs getting it done (right)!
Eggs were washed.
Eggs were packed and labeled according to regulations and put into clean, clear cartons (so, no need to ink out the former farms’ names).
Me at our table
We set up our table, and had a blast networking with other likeminded folks.
We sold about half of the eggs we brought and had a great time! Can’t wait for next Saturday!
We have been enjoying our family coops so much, some for reasons we envisioned, and some for reasons we never thought of when we designed them!
We love so much how easy it is for the farmer to tend the coops morning and evening. One just stands in one place to feed, water, check for eggs, and open or close the pop door. All that we hoped and expected to love, and we do!
We also love how easy (and clean) things remain for the farmer. In closed coops, things get dusty. It’s unavoidable. And, when it’s been rainy for days, things also get stuffy and closed in. (In poorly tended coops, you also get bad ammonia/poop smells, but we don’t normally deal with that in our closed coops, since we tend them properly and use deep litter methods.) Family coops do not require humans to enter where the birds live! Their litter falls under the coop, and in our case, our birds scratch and hang out under there, so it’s not even that dirty. There’s no dust in the air. The farmer tending one of our coops walks on lawn and breathes fresh air!
Young Light Sussex Eating
We love how we are saving on feed. The design of the feeding station means that the chickens cannot scratch at all. They can spread a little feed by flinging with their beaks, but it’s not much, and it generally falls on the feed stand.Ā We take up the feed bowls each night (read below to see why) and each morning, hungry hens tend to peck up all the feed they scattered the day before while waiting for us to come outside each morning.
We love that we seem to be foiling rodents! Each night, we take in these small bowls and dump any remaining feed into our metal storage cans. We stack the bowls and put them in with the feed. In the morning, we take out the feed bowls, fill them, and return them to the feeding stations. Rodents come out at night and find little, if any, feed waiting for them!
Opening the Pop Door
Best of all, we love how easy it is for our small grandchildren to do morning chores with us! These are pictures of 2-year-old Torri helping her grandpa to open pop doors, check for eggs, feed, and water the chickens in four coops. We used to be very careful to ask grands to wear special shoes, wash hands, etc. before tending chickens inside coops. With our family coops, the children never enter the chickens’ domains. They are outside, on the lawn, handling only a hose and a feed dish. They still wash their hands, but we are far less concerned with any dangers of salmonella.
Putting in the Feed Dish
Our family coops have been nothing but delight to us. We’re building more each week; we’ve gotten down to the ability to build one in an easy 2-day period. If you would like detailed plans, we sell them HERE.
While working along at getting set up to mail chicks for the first time in the fall of 2017 and winter of 2018, a part of that process was to become NPIP and AI certified. Maybe you are mystified, as I was, as to why this is important, and how Ā it is accomplished. If so, read on!
What Is NPIP? And AI Clean?
First, then, what do NPIP and AI stand for? Reputable breeders of chicks should beĀ National Poultry Improvement PlanĀ certified and Avian Influenza clean, and must do so to legally transport birds across state lines. Here is a brief explanation of the history and purpose of the National Poultry Improvement Plan (NPIP) from their website.
The National Poultry Improvement Plan was established in the early 1930’s to provide a cooperative industry, state, and federal program through which new diagnostic technology can be effectively applied to the improvement of poultry and poultry products throughout the country. The development of the NPIP was initiated to eliminate Pullorum Disease caused by Salmonella pullorum which was rampant in poultry and could cause upwards of 80% mortality in baby poultry. The program was later extended and refined to include testing and monitoring for Salmonella typhoid, Salmonella enteritidis, Mycoplasma gallisepticum, Mycoplasma synoviae, Mycoplasma meleagridis, and Avian Influenza. In addition, the NPIP currently includes commercial poultry, turkeys, waterfowl, exhibition poultry, backyard poultry, and game birds. The technical and management provisions of the NPIP have been developed jointly by Industry members and State and Federal officials. These criteria have established standards for the evaluation of poultry with respect to freedom from NPIP diseases.
APHIS’ mission is to safeguard the health of our nation’s agricultural resources. Our many animal health experts work closely with other federal agencies, states, foreign governments, industry and professional groups, and others to enhance international trade and cooperation while preventing the introduction of dangerous and costly pests and diseases.
Chicks and hatching eggs that carry these avian diseases can threaten not only flocks to whom they come, but humans as well. Responsible farmers who sell chicks seek to make sure that the birds they mail are healthy. So, what is the process in becoming certified NPIP and AI clean?
The program is administered through state agricultural extension offices. You can find out contact information for your official state officer by clicking here. In my state, West Virginia, inspectors come to your farm for free. (Yeah, it’s almost heaven here for sure!) In many other states, there will be a fee.
So, What’s the Process?
I started the process by sending an email query to the contact listed on the NPIP page linked above. I had to wait about five days for a response, but it was June and I assume the contact was on vacation, because when I did get an email it was very helpful and detailed. It included a phone number, so I called with a few questions. She took my contact information and told me that the inspector would call shortly to make an appointment. He did so two days later.
My inspector made an appointment with me for two weeks after his call. He came an hour late, but this was fine. He only was interested in testing adult birds (six months and older) who were breeders for the chicks we planned to mail out. (In other words, he didn’t test our laying flock.) We have our birds separated into various outbuildings on our farm. He only wanted to test the ones in our breeding coops. We had six birds for him to test by this criteria, even though we have a laying flock of 20 chickens, and over 85 birds under the age of 6 months.
I was surprised when he told us that most flocks he tests in backyards average 12 birds! He also said that it was fine for him to “test sample” because if any birds were sick, all were, and so testing a sample flock would cover all our birds.
The testing consisted of a wing prick for blood (theĀ Salmonella typhoid test, which gives results instantaneously) , and a mouth swab for Avian Influenza (which gets sent to a lab and we get our results back in two to three weeks). The inspector also looked around our facility and rated it. He rated us an “A” for cleanliness — which he mentioned mostly included no dirt piles around the coops — I think because of rodent infestation, but that’s a guess.
He asked about whether we used automated watering or hand watering. We do the latter: I can’t bring myself to trust automated systems, in case they fail, so we water and feed morning and evenings daily, as well as shutting coop doors by hand. He gave us a “1” for notĀ having automated watering. He did not look into our coops to see the cleanliness levels.
He left us some paperwork to fill in. It’s mostly contact information and the type of operation you are running. Two pages; very simple. We mailed it in, and are waiting for our “all clear.” Our inspector told us that it was on us to call and arrange a repeat visit yearly. It took about a month for us to receive our NPIP #253 from the WVDA.
And that was it! I was glad to clear this hoop and find that my birds are as healthy as I thought they were! I think that, for most of us, if you habitually follow best practices for your birds, you too will clear this hurtle easily, so don’t be afraid to try!
This year (2017), we are working on expanding our flocks and taking on new breeds. Our goal is to create three “families” (or clans) per breed of chickens that we raise. This enables us to preserve genetic diversity without needing to import “new blood” every couple of years. We have a large garden (1800 square feet) and are cross fencing it into interior pens with hoop coops ringing the exterior while reducing the area we’ll use to raise food. This past week, we spent a few days building the prototype coop. We are thrilled with the results, as are the lucky Light Sussex birds who giving it its shakedown cruise. Come, take a peek!
General Parameters
This coop’s wire floor is 4′ x 6′. It has two 6′ long 2 X 4 perches (mounted sideways so birdies can tuck their toes in on cold winter nights). It has three nesting boxes, and below these is a food and water station. We plan to put 6 birds (one cock and five hens) in each of these coops, but its maximum size according to normal chicken math (because they will have outdoor space as well) is 12 large fowl.
Both ends of this coop are made from one 4′ X 8′ sheet of exterior grade 1/2″ plywood. We paint the edges, and then encase them in old garden hose shells (or duct tape) in an effort to preserve their life span. The middle two ribs of the coop are made from bent 10′ metal conduit. These are attached by setting them atop 10″ carriage bolts and wiring them to poultry netting. They end up being slightly taller than the ends, but this helps shed rain and snow, so we don’t cut them down. The nesting boxes/feed stand are all made from an additional half-sheet of exterior grade 1/2″ plywood.
About Tarps
Coop covered in silver tarp before modification.
In the prototype design, a silver tarp covered the coop, providing shade in the summer and protection from drafts in the winter. While this will work great, sometimes necessity is the mother of invention! We ordered 7′ X 10′ tarps, but (surprise, surprise) those are not the finished dimensions of the tarp — oh, no! They are actually 6′ 5″ X 9′ 6″. Grrrrr~ Let the imitator of our coop beware!
Luckily, I know how to sew, and I had some heavy duty vinyl left over from a different project. I cut the tarp and sewed in a clear panel (see picture right). We carefully considered how high this panel should go. We wanted to have plenty of shade for the birds in hot summer weather, but allow sunlight in (for warmth and increased egg laying) in the winter.
Tarp modified with vinyl panel
My husband calculated beautifully. The clear panel is south facing, and the high summer sun barely kisses the uphill perch, while leaving more than half of the coop in shade. In the winter, the sun will slant lower, filling the coop with light and warmth for much of the day, yet the birds can still go outside if on those rare, freaky days it gets too hot.
Yay for mistakes, huh? (If you are imitating us but don’t sew, a wee bit more expensive (but effective) option would be to purchase a clear tarp andĀ an opaque one, and lap them so that the clear tarp would show similarly to the picture, right. (We haveĀ tried duplicating the sewing results with duck tape, and it doesn’t work, alas.)
More recently, we have made a great discovery for non-sewers, though! We have used a corrugated plastic panel and put the tarp over top. It works great! On the left is a pictur of one in production.
Under the tarp (as you can see in the picture at the top of this post) the coop has 24″ poultry netting lining both sides of the tarped area. The wire is laced to the conduit ribs (stabilizing both wire and ribs). This netting adds a layer of protection for the birds (especially at night) from raiders — around here, it’s usually raccoons — and also allows us to safely raise the tarp six inches or so on hot summer nights so that breezes can cool the coop. We considered putting netting all the way around the hoops, but rejected it because we wanted a way to access the coop (without installing a door) for winterizing. When we need to get inside the coop body (for winterizing, say, or to do deep cleaning in spring), all we do is shoo the birds out into their pen, close the pop door, remove the tarp, and work on the coop.
One more note on tarps: the one pictured advertized grommets every 18″. This is fine on the sides of the coop, but not good enough for the front and back (the 10′ sides). In these pictures, you can see the tarp as it came to us. However, my plan is to install grommets every 9″ on the next tarp we use. They are easy to put in — no sewing required! You can get grommets at some hardware stores, but even more reliably at sewing supply (fabric) stores.
Mobile or Not: Your Choice~
We are making these coops stationary, mounting them 18″ above the ground around our garden perimeter, but they are easily modified to become chicken tractors by adding wheels to the back side floor framing and repositioning the wire floors, attaching them to the bottom of the floor framing instead of on top, as we did. Such tractors would be light weight and can be easily moved by one person, especially if one added a cross piece between the two front “handles.” I am 5′ 2″ and, though I can carry this coop with my husband, I cannot reach the 4′ span. A cross piece here and wheels in the rear would make moving this coop a breeze, even for me!
Pop door
In our application, we’ve cut a hole in our garden fence the size of the pop door. (If your eye tells you that the coop is not quite level or lined up, you are accurate! What you need to know is that the land is sloping quite a bit and the garden fence follows the lay of the land. The coop floor — and perches and nesting boxes — are level.)
We first intended that the ramp would be the door. However, in refining our design, we came up with the current design (of standing at the back of the coop and operating the door from there) so the ramp became stationary. Therefore, on this version, we filled in the space we had first cut out with a piece of plywood, and then painted it red. In future versions, the cut out will be 1′ square, so the front will be solid except for that low opening. You could build this coop either way, or without any ramp at all, if it functions as a chicken tractor and sits on the ground.
We cut another another hole in our garden fence under the pop door and put wire to the ground under the coop’sĀ frame so that our birds get even more space to enjoy that is shaded: under the coop! This has the added benefits of 1) more greens for the birds, 2) less trouble for my husband to mow, in summers, 3) the dogs can’t run under the coop for shade and scare the chickens half to death, and 4) in winter, the ground under there stays clear of snow so the chickens can get out more often! Word of advice, though. When introducing (especially young) birds to the coop, don’t allow them under it at first or you’ll have a hard time training them to go in at night! (Ask me how I know this… no, don’t.)
Stand in One Place and Do All the Chores? Yes, Please!
To continue: the coop’s pop door that is operated from the coop’s back side by a clothesline. The farmer, standing in front of the nest box and feeding station at the coop’s back, can 1) collect eggs, 2) open/close the pop door, and 3) feed and water the coop’s occupants.
We prefer to hand water, feed, and regulate the door ourselves daily (morning and evening) because we both battle rats and don’t trust automation. However, one could rig these coops with an automatic pop doors and watering systems, or bucket waterers.
There are two details to notice about how the pop door cord was constructed:
Detail: hose covering and PVC elbow
1)Ā On the front of the coop, we were concerned about how the cotton cording would hold up, and/or operate when wet, if we just ran it through the hole without a pulley. Unfortunately, we couldn’t find a pulley that mounted easily the right way. In the end, we used a 1/2ā³ PVC elbow (pictured right) as a guide/preserver of the cording when running the line up from the pop door and through the drilled hole in the front face of the coop.
Detail of hole, cleat on farmer side
2) As you can see in the detail picture at the left, the line that then comes through the space at the top of the hoop coop (under the tarp) exits through a hole at the back and is cleated around two screws. (Be sure to put those screws about 6″ down from the top, or you’ll be fighting with the tarp each time you use it!) Because there is no downward pressure on the line in this area, we didn’t need to put the same PVC elbow, but we did insert a wooden toggle so that, when the cord shortens as the door is closed, the line can’t disappear into the coop.
Feed and Water Station Details
We prefer to not use electricity to heat water in the winter, so we have these shallow, thick yet flexible, rubber feed and water bowls (see below) which are easily dumped when frozen. In the dead of winter, I will use a wagon Ā and go down the row of coops, popping out frozen water and replacing it with heated water morning and evening at least, and sometimes at noon. However, again, one could put a small nipple bucket with heater in the feeding area.
Detail: feed and water station
The bowls are wired off from the birds with 2″ X 4″ galvanized field fencing, curved in an “double S” format. The wire spaces are plenty wide for adult birds to put their heads through for feed/water, but do not allow for scratching of food or sitting on the water. (They can and do still fling it some, though.) This makes for less waste of food and purer water for longer.
Notes:Ā Chickens regurgitate when they drink, so the water still needs changing morning and evening. Also, very young birds can go through these wire spaces. If I were housing juveniles in these coops, I would put a wooden panel on the back of the feeding station and remove the wire barrier until the babies were big enough that they couldn’t go through it.
Young Light Sussex eating
I dump the unused feed back into my metal trash can each night (even brushing spilled feed in as well) so that varmints have nothing to eat here. With the tarp in place, and nesting boxes above, shade keeps the water bowl from growing algea, and the overhang keeps food from being spoiled during rainstorms. I painted the floor of the feeding area in an effort to preserve the life of the plywood. If I was making this a chicken tractor, I think that I would put a lip on its back so that when I moved it, the bowls would stay put.
Nesting Boxes
nesting boxes and feeing station inside
The coop is designed for a family of 6-8 birds on our farm, but as I said above, you could house 12 here. With more than 6 hens, though, it might get a little tight when it comes to nest boxes.Ā Because we anticipate housing only 5-6 hens and one rooster most of the time, we chose to provide three nest boxes. In our experience, multiple hens often choose to use the same box no matter how many are provided. We often find three to four eggs in one favorite box among our laying flock, but that is up to the hens!
The general rule of thumb is to provide one box for every two hens. Our boxes are raised, which laying hens prefer, and the lip in front of them keeps the shavings that we put there to help with egg cleanliness in the boxes, and not falling through to the floor. We do have hens that will sleep in the nesting boxes, so they do need cleaning out regularly (not my favorite farm chore) but that’s so with every nesting box we’ve ever built.
Winter Modifications
We live in the mountains of WV, where temperatures do go to zero in some months of the winter. In the fall, staple feed bags or landscaping cloth over the wire floor of the coop and fill it with dried fall leaves and wood shavings to a depth of 4″. Deep litter will result, insulating and remaining in the coop until spring (with monthly additions), when we will remove the barrier and the coop will become self cleaning again.
In winter, we also staple a clear vinyl flap or landscaping cloth to the back of the feeding/water area in order to cut the flow of winter winds into the coop. It’s great to have the vinyl in the back and on the side so that I can look out at any time and see how my chickens are doing, but an opaque landscaping cloth flap works just as well. In the picture at the right, you see that we added a landscaping cloth skirt. This was actually added in summer because this run had zero shade. But, as winter came on, we left it there for added protection against the cold, both in daytimes and at night.
You can get more detailed information about winterizing in this post.
Want More Information?
How do you like our design? Do you have any improvements to suggest? Got any questions you’d like to ask? Leave them in comments.
Update: We’ve now constructed seven of these coops, and have used them for over 6 months. We are thrilled with the results, so we’ve written up a detailed set of plans for those who are interested!
If you would like to purchase plans, click here. They are $25/set (delivered via PDF), have lots of detailed step-by-step instructions and pictures, and include a bill of materials.
The basic cost to construct one of these coops depends on how many of the materials you have on hand, and how much you need to buy, and where you live. For instance, you only need 6′ of four-foot galvanized wire per coop, but wire is sold in minimum rolls of 25′. If youāre just building one coop, thatās expensive wire! If youāre building eight coops, itās cheap. (The good news on this wire is that you can also use it for the birds’ run as well.)
A ballpark figure for all materials purchased new, but assuming that you have tools needed for assembly, is in the neighborhood of $75-$100. (We’re building 12 of them, and they are costing us more like $60 apiece.)
Storybook Farm has been our home for five years, and I never would have dreamed that we’d get into the business of breeding, raising, and selling chickens. But we are doing just that!
We’re Not Selling Garden Produce
Part of the reason is that I’m definitely not the inheritor of my grandmother’s award-winning green thumb. When we got here, the first thing we did was plant an orchard, and that spring, we cleared and terraced and fenced an 1800 square foot garden. For two seasons, we worked with the soil that was there naturally; very little grew. The next two seasons, we built raised beds and used the square foot gardening method. Things came up, but then came the rabbits to eat the tender bean shoots, and the deer finished off the tomatoes justĀ when they were getting ripe after so many days of watering and weeding. That was the last straw for me as a gardener: I’ve been happily buying other people’s veggies ever since. (I do wish that we could grow cilantro, though, in the winter, especially. I use it a lot, and our local grocery store can’t keep it in stock because many people in our small town haven’t yet discovered it and it goes bad. Sigh.)
We Want a Working Farm!
Pretty Pony!
Part of the reason for the chicken selling adventure is that we have always planned to create a working farm (in contrast to a hobby farm). We first tried raising sheep, and they were a lot of cute, but not any profit to us in any way that could be reflected on a Schedule F tax form. (Did you know that wool prices now are lower than they were 100 years ago, and that’s without adjusting for inflation?) We sold our flock, and now raise cattle instead, mostly for meat for our extended family and friends and to keep down our back 30 acres. We may sell beef someday, but it will take years to build up our herd. So, that’s still not going to satisfy Schedule F any time soon.
I ride horses, and I thought of flipping horses. Yeah. I’m not good with problem horses, so even though I bought a pony for $1200 and sold her two years later for $2400, in the process I came off her and broke a couple of ribs. When she got ornery, I quit riding her and looked to sell her. It was my bad for buying a green pony for my grandchildren when they are total beginners. I just got suckered by her pretty face and big brown eyes… which is why, I guess, she sold so well in the end.
Chickens Were My Hobby First
I never thought of selling chickens before this summer, but I have had fun raising them. Three years ago, I talked my sweet husband into buying me a coop off of Craig’s List and the seven chickens that went with it. Oh, they were so cute I thought. Finally, I said, Storybook Farm looked like a farm.
Then, a friend gave me three guinea fowl. And they were so funny and made such a unique and sassy noise that I fell for them… until one by one they disappeared. So, I decided I had to have more guineas and more chickens. We had an old outbuilding that we could renovate into a bigger coop than my Amish starter one… so, why not? Now we had a layer flock of 25 chickens, and my job began to be finding people who wanted farm-fresh eggs. Well, our little town has a Farmer’s Market on Saturdays, so that was a problem solved.
Then, I bought an incubator. And I was so terrified that it would break mid-hatch that I bought a second one just to have as a backup. My first hatching season wasn’t so great. I had 50% hatches, mostly. But the chicks were so cute! (In the picture at the right, you can see my grandson watching a hatching chick long distance via FaceTime.) It has been so much fun to watch the fascination that the children have with both hatching and the cute little chicks. They even like helping with morning and evening feeding and watering when they’re here.
With a little practice, I got better at hatching, and this year we had 80% hatches… in both of those incubators… which is how we ended up with 60 Silver Penciled Rocks to grow out. (Oops!? Well, not really a problem. We like to eat chicken, and with much encouragement and training have made our peace with butchering if we can’t sell less-than-perfect birds as pets. Yearly, we keep the best birds to improve our breeds!)
Into the Chicken Biz!
So, after reading this blog post, selling chicks and eggs kind of happened to us. What’s not to like? I get to buy a bigger incubator, and a hatcher. I get to start new breeding flocks. I get to meet new friends who love chickens as much as I do when showing my birds. I get to bless other people with cute fuzzy butts!
If we’re successful, we can cover our expenses and fill in that good old Schedule F and get a tax break. We will have a working farm, and I will have the joy of breeding and hatching to my heart’s content. And if we’re not successful, well, I like chickens and I have a generous husband who has always loved to watch me care for the myriad of animals that I’ve talked him into letting me have. So, it’s all good! š
The first hurdle was, as is so often the case, legalities. I consulted the WV Vendors’ Handbook. Here are the (lightly annotated) regulations I found:
It took me a couple of weeks to get all these ducks in a row.
Chicks and hatching eggs that carry these avian diseases can threaten not only flocks to whom they come, but humans as well. Responsible farmers who sell chicks seek to make sure that the birds they mail are healthy. So, what is the process in becoming certified NPIP and AI clean?
More recently, we have made a great discovery for non-sewers, though! We have used a corrugated plastic panel and put the tarp over top. It works great! On the left is a pictur of one in production.
To continue: the coop’s pop door that is operated from the coop’s back side by a clothesline. The farmer, standing in front of the nest box and feeding station at the coop’s back, can 1) collect eggs, 2) open/close the pop door, and 3) feed and water the coop’s occupants.
We live in the mountains of WV, where temperatures do go to zero in some months of the winter. In the fall, staple feed bags or landscaping cloth over the wire floor of the coop and fill it with dried fall leaves and wood shavings to a depth of 4″. Deep litter will result, insulating and remaining in the coop until spring (with monthly additions), when we will remove the barrier and the coop will become self cleaning again.
How do you like our design? Do you have any improvements to suggest? Got any questions you’d like to ask? Leave them in comments.
Part of the reason is that I’m definitely not the inheritor of my grandmother’s award-winning green thumb. When we got here, the first thing we did was plant an orchard, and that spring, we cleared and terraced and fenced an 1800 square foot garden. For two seasons, we worked with the soil that was there naturally; very little grew. The next two seasons, we built raised beds and used the square foot gardening method. Things came up, but then came the rabbits to eat the tender bean shoots, and the deer finished off the tomatoes justĀ when they were getting ripe after so many days of watering and weeding. That was the last straw for me as a gardener: I’ve been happily buying other people’s veggies ever since. (I do wish that we could grow cilantro, though, in the winter, especially. I use it a lot, and our local grocery store can’t keep it in stock because many people in our small town haven’t yet discovered it and it goes bad. Sigh.)
Then, I bought an incubator. And I was so terrified that it would break mid-hatch that I bought a second one just to have as a backup. My first hatching season wasn’t so great. I had 50% hatches, mostly. But the chicks were so cute! (In the picture at the right, you can see my grandson watching a hatching chick long distance via FaceTime.) It has been so much fun to watch the fascination that the children have with both hatching and the cute little chicks. They even like helping with morning and evening feeding and watering when they’re here.