Our Chicken Mansion has caught itself a bad batch of something. While exceptionally frustrating, I take heart with the fact that this is one of the few times in the past 8 years that we’ve had a serious illness in our flock.

One of the first defenses against any illness is of course to clean your coop. So today, on probably one of the last nice days before winter, I was in the coop. Mucking it out to the best of my ability. This included pulling out all of the equipment. Hauling out all of the bedding and then hauling it away to our slow compost pile. Finally I “scrubbed” it down with a mild bleach solution and left it to dry a bit.

I was amused by my chickens who were excessively curious as to what I was doing. One of my hens was particularly irritated with me and set to clucking me out. Every time I thought she had quit, I would step outside and she’d start clucking me out again. Another hen was determined to be IN the nest box even though I had it tilted up on its side. Crazy bird got stuck in there when I moved it to get to something else and boxed her in.

As long as I had all the mucking out going on I decided to clean out my small coop (Coop #3). I had decided two nights ago, after being deafened by the guinea birds, that they had to move out of the Chicken Mansion. So Coop #3 is now full of guinea birds.

Then I started the reverse process with the first coop. It is strange but there is something very satisfying about putting clean hay in the coop. The chickens are happy little birds and everything smells fresh. If only it would stay that way! Nonetheless as I put in the roosts, nestbox, feed and water all my birds came to see me. And they let me know they were happy chickens.

Also today Gramps, the boys and I also worked on our rabbit shed. Daddy and Gramps had gotten most of the framing done the other day. So we just needed to add a support then move the four frames to the south side of the house. It took us all morning but we got it done and they are even in place and clamped together.

Here’s hoping the nice weather holds out for a few more days so we can get the shed complete and a Coop #2 mucked out too!