Renovating the Chicken Shed

So the baby chicks are not babies any more. They pretty much look like adult chickens.

Which means we have been working in getting the chicken shed back in working order. The first thing on the list was a thorough cleaning.

I shoveled out all the old bedding weeks ago, then Noel vacuumed up the remnants and cleaned out the nest box and the food bin, which had both seen mouse incursions (now taken care of by our neighborhood semi-feral, Hobbes).

We recently got a pressure washer, and its first job was cleaning chicken poop off the walls. Yay! It was super gross.

Once the walls were clean, we decided to put a coat of paint down to protect them from future poop situations. We let the whole place dry out for a few days and then Noel went in and primed the walls.

That made it look really clean. We had some small cans of exterior paint downstairs from sampling colours for the house, so Noel gave the chickens an accent wall. While he was doing that, the neighbors came and took their six chickens to their own coop, so now the small chicken tractor isn't nearly so crowded (but it's still too small for permanent housing, in my opinion).

Noel also repaired the automatic chicken door, which had gotten jammed yet again.

This weekend we need to install some new bird netting on the exterior, then we can add bedding and move the girls in here. And maybe come up with names for them.

posted by ayse on 06/19/20