I cleaned my 8 nest boxes today. Took the old straw out, scraped out the bottoms with a toothed garden tool, sprinkled in diatomaceous earth, and added new straw.
Here is my submission for the Animal Care - Sand - Clean Out Four Chicken Next Boxes BB.
To document the completion of the BB, I have provided the following:
- post a picture of 4 dirty nesting boxes
- post a picture of you replacing the straw or clean wood chips/planer shavings
- post a picture of the 4 clean nest boxes
We have two flocks of birds. This flock consists of Rhode Island Reds, Buff Orpingtons, and Silver Lace Wyandottes and they have access to 8 nest boxes. One of the interns build the rack and drilled holes in the bottom of the buckets for ventilation. I visited Windward this past week and found that the birds were nesting/laying under the rabbit cages and the eggs had not been being collected so I washed/cleaned out the next boxes that we wanted the birds to use and removed all the random nests (feeding the pigs) and cleaned the rabbit cages. Now the birds have inviting nest boxes with pine shavings and the area that they were laying in is soggy and uninviting due to the cleaning of the rabbit cages.
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The birds and rabbits share the same spaces - the birds were laying under the rabbit cages on the right
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the dirty nest boxes - I would not want to hang out there either
I'd think you could show cleaning them two separate times to get up to 4. They do have to be somewhat "dirty" in the before shot so it might take more than a day before you can go at it again...