Too Much Rain!
We are getting way too much rain! Plus we had a snow melt with all of this rain! The yard is a mess! When walking down to the chicken coop, the lawn is so soft and squishy! I had to wear boots because my feet would have gotten drenched with regular footwear just walking across the lawn! No drought here!
Areas out front:
Areas out back:
I am glad the chicken run is relatively dry!
The first year with my chickens, they were all sinking in mud here! I had to add many bags of fine gravel, followed by many bags of sand to raise the ground level a few inches inside the run! It still wasn’t quite enough so I had to add many more bags of sand a couple more times until I could get the ground was raised enough to stay puddle-free! All in all, I raised the ground here about 7 inches from what it was! It was a lot of work! I can’t recall exactly how many bags of gravel plus sand were used. I’m guessing I used about 30, 50-pound bags of gravel and about 70, 50-pound bags of sand!
Also, when doing fall and spring cleanups, I typically take out the top layer of sand and add new sand to replace it. I usually buy at least 20, 50-pound bags of sand when I do this. When I had my ducks, I had to remove a lot more dirty sand and replace with a lot more new sand as ducks are very messy!
I have thought about having sand delivered as it would be cheaper. However, my chicken coop is way out back with no way to get the sand delivered out there. The pile of sand would be way out front by the driveway. So I would have to shovel it from the pile of sand into the 4-wheeler cart, drive it out back to the coop, shovel it from cart into the run area by the door, then spread it from the pile by the door throughout the run. I would have to keep repeating this process until I have enough sand throughout the run!
The bags of sand are much easier. I order them for store pickup and they help me load them into the bed of my truck. When I get home I grab the 4-wheeler and cart, pull the cart right up to my truck and slide the bags out, one at a time, into the cart. I drive them all out back to the coop, pull the cart up to the gate, slide each bag off the cart and into the run. I then move all of the bags so they are spread out throughout the run. Then I go around to open and dump out each bag. Since I’m dumping them out throughout the run evenly, no shovel is needed. I just take my hoe and finish spreading the sand evenly. Then I toss the empty bags into one trash bag and I’m done! This method is much faster and easier for me! I know it is more costly than having a pile of sand delivered but it is so worth it! And I only need to do this a couple of times per year for fall and spring clean ups there!
UPDATE!
The rain is now slowly changing over to sleet and freezing rain as the temperature drops. We are supposed to change over to snow later with a mix of rain and snow as the temperature hovers around the freezing mark!
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