Nothing much to report these past few weeks. The chicks are no longer chicks. They are getting ever bigger and within a few more months I may see my first egg. It’s a good thing I had opened the attached run for them as the coop alone has quickly become too small to keep them confined in all day. However that in itself has created an unforeseen dilemma.
Every time it rains (and it’s been raining for the past 2 days here in Brooklyn) the dirt in the run gets quite muddy. The girls don’t seem to notice and run all about in the mud. Then they come back into the coop and run all about; jumping on top of their nesting box and their waterer, running through their feed box, hopping onto their roosting pole, etc. Basically when I come home from work in the evening, the entire coop is covered in poop and mud.
I tried to clean the mud and the poop by spraying a hose into the coop and flushing everything out. But where does the water end up? Of course it leaks right back into the run and creates more mud. This is a vicious cycle of cleaning, getting muddy again and repeat. I’m almost afraid the only option I have is to clean the coop out allowing the water to drain and create the mud, catch each pullet and clean their feet, close off the coop exit and confine the clean birds in their clean coop. Quite the dilemma…
