I picked up five new hens tonight. The couple that I got them from was nice and their coop and run were well designed. They had some sort of an Egyptian rooster that was one of the coolest birds that I’ve ever seen. In all of my admiration, the experience threw me back to three or four years ago in our own chicken efforts. Their chicken run was downright muddy with standing water. The hens were covered in mud and obviously uncomfortable. And the smell. Man, there was a smell. They blamed the rain and I completely understand. We’ve had a record year for rain; especially for Colorado. Mind you, I’m not judging – not one bit. I used to make the same mistake when I was new to raising chickens. In the winter, we would get a thaw and it would turn the entire run into one big soup hole. I don’t like wearing muck boots if I don’t have to and I certainly don’t like walking out of our chicken run with soggy chicken manure caked the the bottom of my shoe and getting it all over the deck on my way back inside the house.
There’s a solution to just about everything in this world. I’ve been reading a lot of Salatin and he talks about the “carbonaceous diaper”. Basically, it involves using some sort of a vehicle to catch and control moisture and smell. Specifically, he talks about using straw for bedding. Salatin says that certain types of manures on their own are hard to handle. They need some sort of a binder to make the job of handling the manure easier. The binder, such as straw or wood chips can attach to the manure and bury it in thick layers, thus burying it and getting rid of the stink and letting it all compost.
We use wood chips. I don’t buy them. I’m too cheap to buy them. I hunt for them. There’s always someone chipping up trees in the neighborhoods around. If not residents, I look for where the tree service companies are working. I don’t like straight chips; I want needles, leaves, roots – everything. It makes for great mulch in the run and helps it to smell fantastic. My main supply over the past few years has come from the local transfer station. In the winter, they host a local charity that chips up Christmas trees as a fund raiser. Over the past few years, they’ve left the chip pile. I’m the only one who puts it to use.
In shoveling anything, especially manure or wood chips, I look for the mechanical advantage. I don’t like handling anything twice if I don’t have to, especially manure. If I’m picking up a load of anything, be it mulch or manure, I look for someone that has a tractor. They have front end loaders at the transfer station and it only takes one bucket to put Ol’ Blue (my pickup) on her knees.
As seen in a previous post, we have a fenced in area where we keep our rabbit hutches. Michael, a blog reader and friend of mine, mentioned that it looked like something straight out of the barrio – so from here on out, I’m calling it the barrio. I’ve laid about four inches of mulch in that area and plan on doing two to three more inches. The rabbits poo below their cages and I’ll be counting on the chickens to kick through (and eat) the rabbit poo, mixing it into the mulch. As it breaks down, I’ll shovel some into our compost areas and work it into soil.
I mentioned that the chickens eat the rabbit poo. Did you know that? Rabbit poo is a big, fat treat for a chicken. Heck, rabbits even lay a special poo at night that they themselves eat. They are called cecotropes and are packed with vitamins and nutrients. I want the rabbits and chickens to work symbiotically. Salatin always talks and writes about how birds follow herbivores. Rabbits are herbivores, chickens are birds.
For now, we have three Rhode Island Reds, two Red Sexlinks and the scruffle-bearded rooster in the barrio. I’m impressed with these girls. They know how to forage and have been cleaning up under the rabbit cages already. The rabbits tend to spill a fair amount of feed, so a lot of the chicken’s calories will come from that.
Here’s to symbiotic relationships and carbonaceous diapers.
Pax Domini Sit Semper Vobiscum,
Mike Oscar Hotel
