Mission Accomplished

What a productive day today was!  The weather was great and I was feeling ambitious – who could ask for a better combination? 

I got a ton of little stuff done, but the big project of the day was mud-proofing the chicken coop.  It’s not that I’ve had health problems with the chickens during the muddy season, but I feel better by doing what I can to prevent any.  I can go to sleep happy tonight.

Before I started, the ground was a mixture of dirt and wood shavings.  I originally thought that the wood shavings would keep the mud to a minimum, but it really didn’t.

After scraping up all the wood shavings that I could, I laid down a layer of gravel for a bit of drainage and then laid the pavers on top.  I filled in the cracks with some more gravel…  It’s far from perfect, but good enough!

The chipped pavers worked perfectly in a couple of spots for me!

     

I threw some wood chips on top of the pavers to help make them easier to clean, put away the electric water bowl (which worked great over the winter) and brought out the regular waterer and voila!  A pretty and functional chicken pen that won’t be an ooey gooey mess every spring   

I still have a few pavers left over, but I know that I will find a use for them.  And I did leave part of the pen un-paved so there is still some dirt for The Ladies to play in.  They don’t know how good they’ve got it!  The only thing they are missing is a cabbage for their pinata