Jean Rudd

Resubmit of last photo for Box #4.

See earlier post that got rejected.  https://permies.com/wiki/30/108540/pep-animal-care/Clean-Chicken-Nest-Boxes-PEP#3850208

It's hard to see, but this is the 4th box..  I have taken a new picture in hopes that it is more clear. You can see the brick wall in the back.

I don't have that many (suburban) chickens so when I built a coop I included 3 nest boxes.  But the gals seem to always make a 4th next box so I "let" them claim this preferred box to avoid what I call "Nest Box Wars".

I cleaned out my 4 boxes to kick off the semi-annual deep litter cleaning of the coop which this year will include painting and minor repairs.  I like to do this when the weather is still warm enough for the coop to dry out because I hose the whole thing off.

I start with the next boxes in hopes that they dry fast enough for the ladies to have access fairly quickly.  And I will let them free range to distract them from the coop takeover and spraying out.  I will power hose everything, scrape anything that is still sticking, then scrub & mop up the remaining.  My coop (It's really more like a pampered chicken hotel) is off the ground and when I built it, I tiled the floor layer because I had some tiles laying around.  It does make it easier to clean.  The nest boxes themselves are just wood (except for the bonus next box which is on the "tiled floor" of the coop and is marked off by a stack of bricks for privacy.

When I dump out the contents of the coop, it goes to the dirt ground 3' below the coop.  This composts further until I use it in my garden.

When I put new shavings in the boxes, I always put diatomaceous earth in under the shavings.  Sometimes I add some dried garden herbs.  This time, I happened to go to the thrift store and saw an unopened pack of excelsior nesting pads.  I tried one and it lasted pretty well (middle dirty picture) so I tried 2 more this time, in boxes 2 and 3.  I like them because they cover the slight hole in the board that leaks shavings down below in my setup.

Meanwhile, the other 2 boxes got regular pine shavings.  Box 1 is too narrow and the bonus box is level with the pine shavings on the floor of the coop so it makes sense.

Viola!  4 clean boxes.  Note:  3 boxes are all together and the last 4th box is below them so it is a separate photo.

Yes, looked totally normal

In my continuing saga of the echinacea that broke my irrigation system:  Short version -- I had to dig up some, so I harvested it.

As it turns out, there was a crack in the drip irrigation line that was below the surface and the echinacea was taking complete advantage and overrunning the patch.  I harvested with multiple purposes.  This will show the drying of leaves and flowers.  I also dried some roots, but they take longer to dry, so they are not shown in final jar.

When I started drying the herbs, I did not know that echinacea is more potent if it dries somewhat quickly, so I opted for low temperature (95 F) in a dehydrator.  The leaves and flowers only take a few hours this way. The roots will take 48 hours.

I will likely save the dried echinacea for when my elderberries are harvested to make a nice syrup for winter colds & flus.

So I harvested a bunch of echinacea today.  I'm drying some, making some tincture, decoction, and infusion.  Some of the harvest photos will be repeats.

I have some splendid patches of echinacea that I've been growing for awhile, trying to get some decent sized roots.  I leave the plants up all winter for the birds to eat the seeds and it seems they spill some seeds.  What started as one little plant now covers a 3' x 10' patch in one location.  Unfortunately, it's a bed of 10'x10' and half the bed has nothing that stays alive.  It looked like a watering issue.  I'm in Zone 5 Colorado, so I have a drip irrigation set up, even though echinacea is pretty hardy and drought tolerant.

Upon investigation, the drip line may be cut into or torn a bit by the roots.  It dives under the concrete walkway so it's hard to tell.  Right where it goes down a small clump of echinacea was growing over it, so it was time to harvest some to get to the root of my problem.

I dug up the clump (which turned out to be 3 small clumps) and prepared it for various futures.

The simplest and fastest is of course a n infusion.  I harvested leaves, flowers and roots, but only used leaves and flowers for this infusion.

Delightful.

Hose repair really is easy.  The hardest part is finding my screwdriver.  Don't worry -- I put it back in the right place when I was done.

I had a leaking hose end right at the spigot.  I had at some time in the past duct taped it.  But clearly, that wasn't enough.  So I broke down and bought the right repair part.

I sliced off the faulty end with a box cutter making a nice straight cut. Then shoved in the new brass end making sure to float the crimp over the hose first (not that I've forgotten to do that once before.)  I used the kind that had 2 Philips head screws to clamp down the metal crimp.  Voila!

Actually that won't be the end of the story.  I had a feeling more than one leak was there because water kind of spurts out from all over the frost-free outdoor spigot.  I had hoped the new hose end with a new washer inside the female end would fix the likely second leak.  It did, but there's one or 2 more leaks happening.  It looks like the vacuum breaker is leaking and probably the knob of the faucet.  But... at least my hose is not leaking anymore.

I love mint tea.  I have a crazy amount of mint in my suburban backyard.   It seems to love the clay soil.  I guess it loves every soil?

For this infusion, I crushed some mint leaves and threw in some lavender blossoms because I had tried them last week with my first ever lavender infusion!  It's a new favorite combination.

You'll notice my bunch of harvested mint is kind of large.  I like to harvest continually through the growing season and dry it as I go.  I'll clip a bunch and then use the best lower leaves which gives me a nice clean stem to tie up the dry.

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Note:  I accidentally submitted this twice!  Oops.  I have a lot of mint.

I set aside some comfrey leaves to dry when I was making the last batch of poultices.  I've never used dried leaves before (only fresh) so I'm looking forward to using them in something.  

I made a thyme infusion (hot) with fresh thyme.  It's very pleasant as an infusion, but I think I like the decoction better.  The infusion is milder but still has a lot of flavor.

We generally eat all meals from scratch so we have a lot of kitchen scraps.  I have a 1 gallon compost bucket in the kitchen that I take out to the chicken yard every day.  The gals love it.  

Typical scraps include peelings, vegetable ends,  leftover rice or pasta (a favorite that they fight over -- especially linguine -- the ladies chase each other and try to steal it because it looks like a worm) scrapings from the dinner plates, stale bread ends, etc.  I will put the occasional ground beef leftovers from the fridge if no human has eaten them.  The ladies love meat sauce.  Never poultry scraps.  I was surprised but they eat potato peels and onion skins -- at least one of my chickens does.  And another one loves banana peels.  I will put citrus in the bin which they don't touch, but I throw the bucket onto (or near) the compost bin which is in their run, so citrus gets the typical cold compost treatment.  I also put in the sprout leftovers in winter when I grow sprouts for us people but they can have the roots when we are done.

I made some composite pictures of the filled buckets, because we don't usually fill it.  Daily use can vary between 1/4 bucket to 1-1/2 buckets.  I conservatively estimated 1/3 bucket per day and showed a month of scraps to give probably 10 gallons total of scraps.