this post was submitted on 04 Oct 2023
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Backyard Chickens (and Other Birds)

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Flooded chickens (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 year ago by BigDanishGuy to c/[email protected]
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We had a bit of rain these few days. 110ish mm over the last 14 days, 25 of which decided to check in on us yesterday. So our run got flooded.

Not having the space for a truck load of woodchips, nor the time to spare, I got a couple of 23kg bales of sawdust. BTW .6USD pr kg for sawdust, what's wrong with the world?

The chickens were quite perplexed as to the bale when it arrived, and definitely not sold on it either when I had spread it out, pic in comments. I'm going to see how it works before spreading another one.

Usually I don't have to pump water from this area before November, but I guess that life ain't fair and the world is mean, so we started the pump this morning. Next 5 months (we'll I guess it'll be 6 months if luck be) we'll be pumping about 26m^3 from this area daily.

There's a Danish children's song that starts with something like "The farmer is always busy on his farm" and then lists the chores. I wonder why I that was stuck in my head as I wandered about the hardware store looking for bedding material.

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[–] BigDanishGuy 4 points 1 year ago

Tipping the pallet over meant some nice worms and a dry spot if all else fails.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Howdy. I'm sorry that your chickens got flooded. Weather and farming don't always work together.

We found that shavings in our outdoor yards got matted and nasty. You will probably need to turn the sawdust to keep it loose. It will also likely get trampled down into the mud.

Not a criticism, just some notes based on our experience.

My wife found a local place that will deliver small amounts of wood chips. I have a 20 cm thick layer in our poultry yards and it's the best thing ever.

The sawdust will get you through but I would plan to switch and try to find a supply of chips before the snow flies if you can. Some local tree services will deliver part loads of chips.

[–] BigDanishGuy 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hi there, I can assure you that sawdust was not on my top 5 material choices, but the time aspect narrowed it down to what I could haul in the minivan. I mean I had a muddy and soaked flock, and the coop is OK for laying and roosting, but it's not big enough for all of them to spend the day in by our standards.

The plan have all along been to relocate about a third of the flock to the freezer in mid/late October, so don't worry about animal cruelty due to too little space during the winter.

We bought our self some time for now, and we're actively pumping as much as we can. So it's going to be OK ... for now.

The plan for this winter will be woodchips. Come summer I might have to actually dig the draining I've been talking about for the past 3 years.

We've got some old ash and elm trees, that unfortunately are too close to the house, so they'll have to come down whenever my insured arborist buddy has the time this fall. Once they're down and parted, we'll be renting a woodchipper for the rest and that'll give us enough chips for the winter.

But I'll have to admit, the amount of water we've had these last 14 days has taken us by surprise, and we still have another 10 or 15mm to come over the next 8 hours.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I knew that the sawdust wasn't your first choice. Farming is food in, poop out, rushing from one crisis to another. You had a crisis and you dealt with it.

I was skeptical about the wood chips but they are by far the best yard cover we have ever used. You need a deep bed of them and the chickens will constantly turn them looking for bugs.

My wife spent last year digging the shavings that we use in the houses out through the chicken doors onto the wood chips. This spring it was a terrible mess that I had to dig out and replace with fresh wood chips. I asked her never to do that again. It means that the shavings have to take the long way out, sometimes down a hallway but the yard stays nicer.

A French drain with a 3" perforated corrugated pipe with a cloth sock works well for draining chicken yards.

[–] BigDanishGuy 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Shavings, that's the word! It eluded me yesterday. I bought wood shavings, not dust. I wasn't satisfied with that word, but my limited English vocabulary failed me.

Farming is food in, poop out, rushing from one crisis to another. You had a crisis and you dealt with it.

Totally! You deal with the immediate crisis, and then you start figuring out how to deal with it more permanently. And before you've done that there's a new crisis. Farmers catch a lot of flagg around here for poor handyman work, but that's just not always fair!

If the powers that be are willing, I'm going to do a bit more draining next summer, than a single French drain.

If you care to know, I'll jot it down here, but that's probably more a strategy to keep myself locked onto the project. To the south of me there's a field with a slight incline, and the groundwater is just 2m down. That means whenever it rains, water will run onto our property through our 50m long southern hedge. 10m into our property that water is then blocked by buildings, amongst them the chicken coop in my pictures. So I'm going to dig a 50m ditch, make it decline into a central well, put a drain pipe at the bottom of the ditch, and fill with gravel until 30cm below the surface. Maybe I can hook it onto the existing draining passively, fingers crossed, otherwise I'll have to invest in a better pumping solution than the current, which relies on a floating switch that gets stuck thrice a week. If I'm really smart, which seldom occurs, I'll manage to direct some of the water into the run for the chickens to drink.

But that's next year's project. Right now the chickens are dry again and hopefully none got sick from being soaked.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Man...if the water is running onto your property from your neighbors property that sounds like a them problem, not a you problem. Depending on where you live this may be a code issue. The code probably requires them to direct their run-off to the ditch instead of on to your property. Maybe they would share the cost of your drainage work.

[–] BigDanishGuy 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think that we have codes for that here... That sounded weird, this is Denmark after all, home of the unnecessary regulations and unwarranted beaureaucracy. I'll have to check that out.

Anyway there is a ditch, it's just not that effective when it's full because the ground water table rises to 1.5m below the surface in the fall.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I didn't realize that you were in Denmark. I knew you weren't in the US because you didn't measure things in Freedom Units.

High water table is a pain in the ass. You can dig down a few cm here and find water. In the spring there are parts of our land that are under half a meter of water. There is standing water all year in parts of it.

I just checked the rules here in Ontario. If the water has not been collected, like, into a ditch, then it can run naturally onto ad adjacent property. The owner of that adjacent property can protect their land from your water by building a berm or taking other action. They can also sue you to install a ditch to collect the water and direct it to the municipal ditch. Maybe your chickens need a treehouse?

[–] BigDanishGuy 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If the water has not been collected, like, into a ditch, then it can run naturally onto ad adjacent property. The owner of that adjacent property can protect their land from your water by building a berm or taking other action. They can also sue you to install a ditch to collect the water and direct it to the municipal ditch.

Pretty sure it's the same deal here. It seems reasonable at least. But I'm not suing the owners of the neighboring land. First off we're on somewhat friendly terms, as in they let me use the drain in the field to the north to drain the clean water from my sewage treatment plant and they'll run their liquid manure hose across my access road when we're off at work. Secondly the water that we battle with goes into our pond, which then flows over into their field, causing their machinery to get stuck. Thirdly they're massive. Like 1200 hectares of land owned and another 600 rented, and an organization with a CFO and 4 people in the kitchen making lunches for all the mark hands. I'm pretty sure they can afford the representation, and to such a degree that it would be 10 times more expensive to sue, than just digging the damn drain myself. Nope, nothing good will come of suing them for something as small as this.

Besides it's not their fault that the water table is where it's at, that's just force majeure. Life ain't fair and the word is mean, so I'll deal with my problems myself. Oh I'll still bitch and moan here, but I'll be paying and digging too.

Maybe your chickens need a treehouse?

Lol I'm pretty sure that the two eldest Araucana mixes would love that, they used to sleep +5m up in the tree above the old run.

But actually the coop is raised about 25cm because of the water issue (that's 10 of the short units in that "system" only used by the US, Liberia and Myanmar... If you can call that a system /s). So it's a bit of a tree house.