I’m almost ready!

[Cortneyb]

Oh, so good to know! I live near McKinney. How do your chickens handle the winters? I'm so afraid to put mine outside! They are 2 month old silkies and their feathers have come in... I'm thinking I may take them outside for the days during this week and bring them back in for the evenings so they can acclimate to the colder temps. during the day. Right now they're still in their buckets with a warmer. This is my first rodeo so I really have no clue what I'm doing!

Cortney

Me too! We use leaves or grass clippings combined with pine shavings for substrate. Every few months we completely bag up all the floor and start afresh.

 

[Cortneyb]

Thank you! My husband's been working hard on it for a while. He's not finished yet, but the chicks can go outside while he's still working on it!

The coop look great!

 

[Cortneyb]

I can only have hens in my area, so hopefully they'll all be girls- although I already hear one rooster I have a maltese and the big one is a greater swiss mountain dog. They aren't too sure what to think of the new additions to the fam!

Your hens are likely to only use one box. You should probably use hay instead of shavings, less chance of them eating it. What kind of dog is that?

 

[Cortneyb]

Can you explain more about deep litter and cold composting? I'm looking for something that is on the low maintenance end, too, so that sounds intriguing!

Thanks

Dallas area, you don't get harsh winters (one of my daughters went to school in Denton, then UT @ D, while we lived east of Austin), assuming your girls are fully feathered, they will have no issues with your weather. WE may have issues with the weather, but THEY won't. Looks like they have protected, draft free spaces that are dry. That's all they need.

As to the run floor, pine shavings are fine. So is straw, though there are some complaints from some posters about it. So is leaf litter - and gathering from your photo, you may have some of that available.

Ultimately, what to throw in your run floor will depend on the management system you choose. I like deep litter and cold composting, its very low maintenance and all the materials I need for it (leaf litter, dried yard clippings, etc) are already present on my acreage. You may also (I do not) have free woodchips available thru ChipDrop or similar services. Basically, you have options, you just need to pick the option that works best for the amount of time and expense you want to put into it.

A properly functioning chicken keeping operation is a system - and in the best systems, the individual parts work to support one another as a cohesive whole.

 

[garlandchickens]

Oh, so good to know! I live near McKinney. How do your chickens handle the winters? I'm so afraid to put mine outside! They are 2 month old silkies and their feathers have come in... I'm thinking I may take them outside for the days during this week and bring them back in for the evenings so they can acclimate to the colder temps. during the day. Right now they're still in their buckets with a warmer. This is my first rodeo so I really have no clue what I'm doing!

Cortney

Nice! We live in Garland right near Richardson. We put ours out last October at 8 weeks and they did fine. What you’re thinking of sounds great. I don’t really know anything about silkies, but I think at 8 weeks all chickens are pretty weather hearty. All ours did fine last winter as it’s not too bad weather here. It’s more the summers you have to worry about! “Their water’s out again!”

 

[garlandchickens]

I also don’t think they need a warmer anymore at 8 weeks... just a thought.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Can you explain more about deep litter and cold composting? I'm looking for something that is on the low maintenance end, too, so that sounds intriguing!

Thanks

There's a TON of posts about it. @aart and @3KillerBs are the majority of my information on it - i think - (apart from actual practice), but the short form is that you cover the run in a mix of high carbon materials - pine shavings, leaf litter, straw if you have it, yard clippings, etc. - to a depth of several inches. The chickens poop in it. The spill things in it (food and water both), it likely rains in it every once in a while. The chickens dig in it, playing, looking for bugs, whatever.

Because its in soil contact, beneficial microbes in the soil look at all that good organic "stuff" and start to compost it. Your chickens digging at it help to aerate it somewhat, but its mostly dry (as compared to a typical compost pile, which is generally 50% brown, 50% green) so it breaks down relatively slowly("cold").

Periodically, you throw more brown at it, maybe give it a rake with a bow rake if its piling up somewhere. When it gets deep enough (maybe 1/ yr) you shovel it out - or some of it - and start over.

Some people say it smells for the first few days till things get started - I don't have much sense of smell, never noticed (long, irrelevant story, that) but once it gets going, assuming you have adequate ventilation (which you clearly do) and that it doesn't end up completely waterlogged for days at a time (unlikely in your neck of the woods), it stops smelling like much of anything. and then, like I said, its very low maintenance.

 

[Cortneyb]

I'll definitely give that a try. Sounds like the easiest way to do it. Thank you for the info!

There's a TON of posts about it. @aart and @3KillerBs are the majority of my information on it - i think - (apart from actual practice), but the short form is that you cover the run in a mix of high carbon materials - pine shavings, leaf litter, straw if you have it, yard clippings, etc. - to a depth of several inches. The chickens poop in it. The spill things in it (food and water both), it likely rains in it every once in a while. The chickens dig in it, playing, looking for bugs, whatever.

Because its in soil contact, beneficial microbes in the soil look at all that good organic "stuff" and start to compost it. Your chickens digging at it help to aerate it somewhat, but its mostly dry (as compared to a typical compost pile, which is generally 50% brown, 50% green) so it breaks down relatively slowly("cold").

Periodically, you throw more brown at it, maybe give it a rake with a bow rake if its piling up somewhere. When it gets deep enough (maybe 1/ yr) you shovel it out - or some of it - and start over.

Some people say it smells for the first few days till things get started - I don't have much sense of smell, never noticed (long, irrelevant story, that) but once it gets going, assuming you have adequate ventilation (which you clearly do) and that it doesn't end up completely waterlogged for days at a time (unlikely in your neck of the woods), it stops smelling like much of anything. and then, like I said, its very low maintenance.

 

[3KillerBs]

There's a TON of posts about it. @aart and @3KillerBs are the majority of my information on it - i think - (apart from actual practice), but the short form is that you cover the run in a mix of high carbon materials - pine shavings, leaf litter, straw if you have it, yard clippings, etc. - to a depth of several inches. The chickens poop in it. The spill things in it (food and water both), it likely rains in it every once in a while. The chickens dig in it, playing, looking for bugs, whatever.

Because its in soil contact, beneficial microbes in the soil look at all that good organic "stuff" and start to compost it. Your chickens digging at it help to aerate it somewhat, but its mostly dry (as compared to a typical compost pile, which is generally 50% brown, 50% green) so it breaks down relatively slowly("cold").

Periodically, you throw more brown at it, maybe give it a rake with a bow rake if its piling up somewhere. When it gets deep enough (maybe 1/ yr) you shovel it out - or some of it - and start over.

Some people say it smells for the first few days till things get started - I don't have much sense of smell, never noticed (long, irrelevant story, that) but once it gets going, assuming you have adequate ventilation (which you clearly do) and that it doesn't end up completely waterlogged for days at a time (unlikely in your neck of the woods), it stops smelling like much of anything. and then, like I said, its very low maintenance.

That's a very good summary of how it works in practice.