Deep Litter method: the once a year clean up

Sadly, all good things must come to an end and if you use the deep litter method in your chicken coop, eventually you just have to clean it out. Deep litter is awesome because it cuts coop cleaning down to a minimum. I just scrape poop boards when needed and add litter and Diatomaceous Earth once in awhile and my maintenance schedule is super easy! 

About once a year however, it all needs to come out and we start all over again. I usually do this in spring as the coop seems to stay cleaner longer since the chickens want to be outside so much now! Don't forget to wear a dust mask when cleaning your chicken coop. Here's how I make coop dust masks. Cleaning it all up is a pretty easy process though, this is how I do it:

Happy St Patricks day!

Q-Tip was in a festive mood today and wanted to wish you all a Happy St Patrick's day! She said  to tell you don't drink too much green beer, but have a great day!

From all of us here at the farm......Have a safe celebration!
~L

Why I believe in Backyard Chickens.

I recently stumbled upon some links to a commercial egg facilities 'inside' pictures and entered into a heated discussion on treatment of animals. On one side we had the activists so inflamed about that particular treatment that they're calling for a boycott of all egg production and consumption. On the other side is me. Just me and my belief's that while what they say is common practice in egg production is disturbing, owning chickens and consuming their eggs is a completely humane practice. 

There was also a minority of participants that I'll call the naysayers. They either didn't believe or didn't want to believe this was the truth about egg production farms. Now I will mention that we're talking about keeping chickens for eggs, which is what the majority of home based chicken owners do anyway. I'm not getting into meat here, the discussion was only about eggs. 

The main part of the discussion centered on humane treatment of the animals. Simply put things like debeaking, several chickens in 1 cage and filth under the cages are quite common in egg producing facilities. The animals don't get health care, so the sick ones just die or are culled to make room for the healthy ones. The quality of feed is sometimes questionable and the noise and smell can be unbearable. 

I'm not disagreeing with any of this! (I'm also not saying it's every single facility!) I'm simply saying that while those techniques are absolutely horrible....for every home that keeps backyard chickens, that's less eggs that are being purchased at the store. Less eggs being purchased at the store tips the balance of supply and demand. Less demand drives down the price which is turn makes it a less profitable business and then we get a beautiful little statistic like this:
Today, there are approximately 175 egg producing companies with flocks of 75,000 hens or more. These companies represent about 99 percent of all the hens in the United States.** In 1994, there were around 350 companies with flocks of 75,000 hens or more.³
(Taken from the American Egg Board website on 3/05/2014)
Do you see what's happened here? As the popularity of backyard chickens and homesteading has risen in the last 20 years the number of egg producing companies has dropped by 1/2! Why are these 'activists' calling for us to quit raising our own chickens for eggs when it's doing so much good? This doesn't make sense to me. In fact, PETA actually agrees that eating eggs from happy backyard chickens that are well cared for is ok!