Working in the chicken house

Today was the day I decided to shovel out the pine shavings underneath the roosts in the chicken house, and replace them with sand.  In order to reach the area easily, I needed to remove a chicken ladder I had added up to a platform in the coop.  I got my hammer and used the claw end to pry up the board.  The above photo shows the result.  The board didn't move, but the hammer sure did.  I had to go out to the barn and look through Ron's tools to find a heavy duty hammer.

So I shoveled out all the pine shavings and droppings underneath the roosts.  I have a very large plastic bucket - and that thing was HEAVY!  I managed to get it outside, but I'll wait until tomorrow when I'm not so tired to lug it to the area where I've started my chicken droppings/pine shavings compost pile.  I had six bags of sand.  They were heavy, too.  Very heavy.  I barely managed to lift them up to the platform under the roosts.  I only needed three bags to make a 3-4 inch layer of sand.

So tomorrow I'll check to see how much poop was deposited overnight.  With 22 chicken roosting above that platform, I imagine it'll be a bunch!  I have a pooper scooper - and I'll see how practical it will be to scoop the poop every day or two.  If it's practical, it'll sure keep down any odor in the coop.

Since I was already dusty and dirty from changing out the pine shavings for sand, I decided to go ahead and clean out the entire coop.  I had let the people area of the coop get really cluttered!  We had worked on building the pen - and had just kinda piled stuff in there.  So I got it cleaned well, too.  I want to get a heavy duty vacuum to help control the dust.  An incredible amount of dust is created by chickens!