I really enjoyed my day off today...I tried not to think about work and I didn't!!! Yeah!!!
Didn't do too much today, moved one of my compost piles which I am hoping to till into the garden this fall. I think based on how it looked, I may be able to do it. Moved a pile of mulch also, and noticed mold under the surface of the mulch...wondering if I can use the mulch or if I should add it to the compost...Thoughts anyone?
Have our plan now for the chicken coop...instead of building a standalone coop, we are going to build it in the back portion of the garden shed. I plan to enclose an area 4 feet wide by the width of the shed which is 10 feet, giving it more or less around 40 square feet. I don't plan to have more than a half a dozen chickens to start, so I think that should be ample room. My big concern, which I need to find out about is how insulated I need to have it for the winter...Up here, it tends to get cold sometimes...hahaha...
Outside, I have the run already fenced in and it is approximately 10 ft x 15 ft. We would like to have free range chickens, but until we understand the nuances involved, we are taking this approach.
I watched a webinar the other night sponsored by Grit magazine on raising chickens, and it was awesome. I learned a lot!
If you turn the mold over and recompost it it should be OK. We were thinking of doing the shed thing but since we didnt have a shed the expense of getting one and then refitting it for the chickens was going to be really high so that's why we bought a chicken coop besides neither one of us are carpenters...lol. You should insulate it and even up under the roof as well and dont forget to put a heater in for the winter to keep those little girls warm. We are making a fenced in area for ours and then this fall after garden is done we'll let them at the rows to clean them up. I sure hope they take care of the Japanese beetles. We had an awful lot of them last year.
ReplyDeleteDenise, thanks for the advice, very much appreciated. I will have to post some pictures of the shed once I retrofit the back end into the coop.
ReplyDeleteI did turn over the mulch, I figure I probably will end up putting it into our larger compost bin..not much left and we usually get our 4 x 8 trailer filled for the planters and trees.
R Dean