Filed under: getting started
As mentioned in Designing Anything Around a Tree, the coop went under a lovely pluot tree, and the lovely pluot tree is near the house. Right under the kitchen window, in fact.
This was fine when we had tiny month-old chicks bumbling around a large dog crate with a heat lamp over it. We could look out any time and be sure our precious baby fuzz-heads were fine.
As soon as they started to gain a little mass and act like big chickens, however, we figured it out.
Chickens are prairie birds. Prairie birds are dust bathers, meaning that to keep themselves clean, they dig out hollow nest-sized depressions, snuggle down inside, and toss beakfuls and foot-fulls and wing-fulls of dust and bedding all over themselves. Then they shake, and then they flap … and if you’ve got more than a couple of them (See: Not Planning for the Maximum Number of Chickens Allowed by Local Ordinance) what you’ve got is a permanent floating dust cloud.
Since a fair amount of what they’re scratching around in is chicken poop, what you’re seeing suspended in midair–and baking into your banana bread, if the coop is under your kitchen windows and your kitchen windows are open–is powdered poop. If you build the coop anywhere near the house, nearby windows will pretty much never be opened again.
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