It happens every year. Winter comes; we and the chickens are beginning to make preparations around the farm for cold weather.

Some of the chickens and ducks have been molting the last few weeks or so. They are making sure that their winter down is coming in before it gets too cold. Sue has begun winter coop preparations too. Today all of the old litter was removed from the main side of the coop (the brooder side of the coop was already done). Sue moved it with five gallon buckets and put it all into the compost bin. She didn’t count the number of buckets – but it was enough to completely fill the compost bin. Sue had me compacting it and watering it as we she filled it up, so there is a lot of stuff in there!

The full compost bin

While she cleaned out the coop, I replaced the covering on top of the nesting boxes, it was pretty yucky. Then replaced the privacy curtains over these boxes. They really like the curtains so its good to changed them every now and then.

Sue finished emptying out the coop and then filled it with two bales of compressed straw. It’s the really soft stuff that they truly like to nest around in. It looks, and smells, so fresh and clean. Here are the remaining photos from the day.

All Cleaned out
Newly filled with straw
Is this new?

So this last photo is of a little nesting shelter that Sue put together for the ducks. It’s been sitting under the nesting boxes for a year and half and they didn’t really end up using it. Today we moved it out into the coop area for them to use as a protected shade shelter, or dirt bath house… something. It attracted a great many looky-loos this morning. So we’ll see how they use it.

This is only the beginning of the “winterizing” that we’ll be working on. I’ll try to be better at keeping you up to day. Until then, as always~
Thank you for reading.