We are beginning to think it will rain forever. It’s not so much that it rains non-stop, but in rains so frequently that literally everything is soggy. Even the air is soggy and hangs so thick with moisture that it’s like swimming with your clothes on. The temperatures have been in the 70’s during the day, and not much lower when the sun goes down…which is a funny way to put it now that I think about it…since we never see the sun, I should say after dark.

While all our outdoor work is being hindered, the chicken coop has suffered the most. I kept putting off cleaning it for way longer than I’d like to admit. I had no dry bedding anywhere to replace the old, but the old got to the point where it wasn’t bedding anymore. We finally scraped it out and put in wet wood shavings, thinking they would dry out the fastest of any material we had, but they didn’t. The inside of the coop is still as wet as when we put them in.

The very worst part, though, is the run. We have a third of it covered, just as you come out of the coop, and this keeps the food dry and gives the birds a place to sit outside while it’s raining. The dirt in the run is (was) packed down hard and solid so it has always dried out quickly between rains, until now. The dirt hasn’t dried out at all and has gradually begun to look like those mud pits people wrestle in.  Chickens and pigeons were actually wading in mud. I kept hoping it would stop raining long enough to gain some ground (LOL), but it hasn’t let up. Yesterday, we finally decided we had to do something, so we took several bags of leaves that Roy picked up from the roadside in town (for the garden), and spread them very deep on top of all the mud and muck. My weight was still sinking it in, but the birds are light enough that it was like wearing snowshoes for them.

In spite of the fact that we improved the conditions of the coop, I still found an over-soggy pigeon sitting in the water bucket with a few inches of water when I went down tonight. Everyone else had gone in to roost, but this guy appeared to have just given up and was just sitting there quietly. I picked him up and tucked him under my arm while I refilled the bucket, gathered eggs, and shut everything down for the night. He never moved (I actually forgot he was there) and rode along under my arm for about 20 minutes. I brought him in and bathed him in the sink and then Roy helped me dry him with the hair dryer. He didn’t protest until he got almost dry and then he perked up and started complaining. I put him on an old towel in the kitchen floor with a little stool over him and a little blower heater in front. He shook and fluffed and settled down happily for several hours until I put him in a box for the night.

I realized pretty early on that I would have to figure out how to permanently fix this problem, because not only has it gotten unhealthy for the birds, it is beyond unpleasant for the humans to deal with. After much pondering and running ideas through my head, I finally hit on the idea to use pea gravel. I can get a load for about $30 as soon as we get the truck out of the shop. The rain will just wash the droppings down through the gravel and I can hose it down if needed. I thought I was brilliant! What I didn’t realize until after my “discovery”, is if I had done a smidgen of research, I would know that I am far from the first person to think of this and could have saved myself hours of brainstorming. Turns out it is a common and highly recommended material for a run. Roy has suggested that I put in french drains around the edges to further drain the water, which is an excellent idea. I can’t wait to have clean chickens and pigeons!