The sun has started to shine again. The spring rains aren’t done, but my eldest and I had some time to clean out the coop. Exercise and cleaning and out of the house! We put the chickens in a run with some scratch and some water, since they freak out when we mess with their coop. It worked well to have them not underfoot and not panicking.

We removed all the old pine shavings and droppings, washed down the roost and sprayed it with vinegar, swept up and dusted. Then we put the roost back in, put new straw and dried lavender in the nest boxes, dusted everything with diatomaceous earth, and spread out four and a half bags of pine shavings. We didn’t spread out one the bags to see how long it would take the chickens to disperse it themselves. They did a fair job and had a low hill by the end of the day. Oh were they happy to go back to their coop!