Ma Maison des Poules (chicken coop)

not my nesting boxes but a really cute idea!

It's time to clean it out again.  We clean the floor, walls, roosts and nesting boxes of our chicken coop once a year only.  Black gold is what we call the litter.  It has been composting over the last several months and turns normal garden soil into highly charged nutrient soil.

Our coop floor is the deep litter method.  We use pine shavings, stirred up a couple of times every week and another layer added every month.  It keeps the coop smelling like wood chips instead of ammonia.  And as the litter decomposes, it puts off heat thereby provided some additional warmth to my little flock in the winter months.

This coop is actually a playhouse that we had built on our property with a few additional windows.  We added upper drafting windows near the roof on each side of the house, a nesting box hinged window as in the picture below to gather eggs easily and an even lower window on the opposite side hinged on it's top edge.  It allows us to open it as a trap door and sweep everything out.

 Eek 44:23...teach my people the difference between the holy and the common and show them how to distinguish between the unclean and the clean.

our nesting boxes are accessed from the outside

looks like a cottage in the woods

a dutch door helps with ventilation during the hot summer