Cleaning Chicken coop #2 and 4h market steer.

Went out today and decided to clean chicken coop # out, it was a mess.  Chickens can be messy, but I enjoy having them. My Grandma Akers loved her chickens.  She would always get her chicken books in the mail and look though it for hours.   She always had them while I was going up.  She had this one mean ole rooster.   He would chase me every time  I would go over to visit her.  I may have only been around 4 years old but I still remember that ole rooster.  For the longest time, I was afraid of chickens, but finally I got over that fear and so glad I did.   We have had chickens off and on, for about the last ten or eleven years now. I guess, I get my love of chickens from my grandmothers.  Both of them raised chickens.

Cleaning out the chicken coops isn't one of my favorite chores to do on the farm.   Today was a hot day to pick to decide to clean out the #2 coop.   It was a hurried job.  I usually give the coops two really good cleaning a year, once in the spring and once in the fall and get them ready for winter.  Then, the rest of the time, I just clean at them.  I have a broody hen and she was not happy with me cleaning out the nesting boxes.

Our coops aren't anything fancy. Most of the time, the chickens, free range and we put them up at night.  They still make a mess when they go on the roost for the night.

I use this putty knife to scrape poo off of the roosts and off of the nesting boxes.  It does a really good job. 

I scrape it all off with the putty knife and I wear gloves when I clean out the chicken coop too. 

Then I will rake it out.  It is dirt floor.  I like for them to have a dirt floor so they can scratch around in it during the winter months and it is a lot easier to clean out, well at least it is for me. 

After raking, I sprinkle some diatomaceous earth around the outside and inside of the coops.  They say it helps with keeping mites  and bugs.   

Lastly, I spread some wood shavings down.   We buy our wood shavings from a local sawmill by the truck load.   It is way cheaper than  buying them from a feed store by the bag.   I think, Sam gets it for $20.00 a dump tailor load.   Which is a lot.  We use it also in the barn stalls for the horses and other livestock. 

This is our daughter's 4h market steer for this year.   Our fair isn't till the end of August.   She needs to get him finished out with in the next few weeks before the fair starts, so he will be ready to go.  This will be her last year showing a steer in 4h.   He looks a mess in the pic,  she hadn't bathed him or curried him out.  She keeps him in a special stall, with fans and an air condition unit to keep him cool so he will keep his long and thick enough for the fair.