Winterising the chook house.

This is the chook house that came with the property. It is nicely positioned under the shade of a huge loquat tree. My chooks free range during the day and dutifully put themselves to bed at night, or can be easily encouraged into the pen with a bit of grain at other times.

All of the information on the web and in books about keeping chooks raves about them beingthe best recyclers...feed them your kitchen scraps, collect the poo and put it on your garden etc. This is fine, except because mine are out during the day and they poo where they like. Sometimes this is on the garden, but mostly it is on the deck, on the paved area, on the lawn, up beside the shed where nothing grows...you get the drift. Add to this, that they are not laying yet and they are just five more mouths/beaks to feed. They do, however, poo a lot in the night.

So... as well as erecting some walls made from a recycled wardrobe, in the corner of the coop, to make a chookie bedroom with fewer draughts, I have paved under their roost. This means, I will be able to, at least, make the most of what they produce at night.

I am planning to hang a match stick blind, which has been donated for the cause, at the front of the bedroom to protect them even more.

Did you know that chooks don't do separate wee and poo? The white part of their droppings is the urine and the darker part the poop. They have only one outlet for both and it is called the cloaca.

A Belgian artist has made a machine, called the cloaca, that makes poo. Check it out.