- Welcome back to "Jacques in the Garden."
Today we're going to be talking about the chicken coop,
the chicken orchard,
and sort of some updates and upgrades
that I wanna make to them.
And also we're gonna talk
about why I have 400 pounds of sand,
and why this chicken
is looking at this mysterious structure.
So let's get right into it with the chicken orchard.
(gentle music)
So it's been almost a year
since this chicken sort of orchard has been in place
and, overall, I'm really happy with it.
I think it's done a really good job
of blending my chickens with my garden
so that I get all the benefits of having trees,
like these fruit trees,
and also I still have all the space
for these chickens to roam.
So overall I am happy.
Some of the things that I would do differently though
are, first of all, probably bury these tree surrounds
a lot more than I did.
Right now, I kind of put 'em at the surface level.
They are designed to be able to be buried
up to like two-thirds depth,
so I could have put the ground level right here.
And you could see exactly why I mentioned that,
it's because the chickens love digging around boundaries.
That's something that I've learned while having chickens
is that if you have an edge or a boundary,
the chickens will dig it
and they will absolutely love digging it out.
So that's why you see these kind of caved in areas.
And then, what happens
is when I go to water my tree surround,
all that water goes in and then drains out the sides
because the chickens created a void.
One of the things I did differently this time
is used the native soil directly from this chicken run.
And the reason why I did that is that it has some clay,
it has sand, and it actually has a lot
of chicken poop in it,
so I had a lot of added fertility.
The thing that I did in the past that didn't work so well
is I used some potting mix,
and the potting mix just breaks down over time.
Potting mix is mostly organic matter,
like sticks, wood, woody material, things like that.
So this natural soil will actually persist
over time and stop the settling issues that I had.
You'll see that a lot of these beds,
like, had caved in sections
where the soil either deteriorated
or because the chickens were digging their boundaries,
all the soil settled out,
so that's one of the main reasons I redid that.
And actually already I could see
that all the trees look a lot healthier.
Now one of the other things I probably
would've done differently, in particular for lemon trees,
is I would've thinned the fruit off.
I decided to get greedy and leave the fruit on,
and you could see by the growth of the tree
is that it really suffered.
I have this stubborn mentality
that the plant knows what it's doing
and it'll support itself.
But, clearly, lemon trees want at least a year or so
to be established before you start producing lemons.
Now, overall, this dwarf mulberry's doing great.
The two figs are doing okay.
But, in general, the watering was poor
and that's mostly 'cause the chickens
dug out got all the soil.
What I would say in summary is bury your tree surrounds deep
and they'll work wonderfully
'cause the chickens won't be able to get to the bottom,
it'll make it really easy to water,
and then you'll have a nice blend of shade,
chickens, orchard, everything together works wonderfully.
Let's head back into the actual enclosed chicken run
and talk about some of the upgrades I wanna make there.
So the main thing we're going to be looking
at inside this enclosed run is actually the watering system.
This is the first system we put in,
actually, it's the second evolution I should say,
and it's working okay.
It's totally reasonable, it's fine.
But I find, like, the chickens
don't really like the optionality of it.
There's only one, two, three
of these actual water dispensers.
And the positioning that we put 'em in,
honestly, we didn't really think about it that well,
and we kinda just spread them out
and then put 'em in without thinking
about where it's gonna go.
So you can see it's kind of a challenge
to even get to this last one,
this one is blocked by this doorway,
so they really are only using this guy here.
And they work okay, they leak a little bit,
you could see that the wood is wet,
and this whole structure in general is caving in on itself
'cause, again, chickens love digging in a boundary.
So we're gonna replace it.
And this is originally a five-gallon water dispenser.
And what we're gonna do is actually
put in the CoopWorx Water Silo.
Now that's what this whole chicken is looking at.
It might look like it's about to launch a tactical missile,
but it's actually just a water dispenser.
And one of the nice things that I really like about this
is that it's made by the same company
that I have in my feeder.
So this is CoopWorx,
and we actually have the CoopWorx on our store now.
And I have to say, I can't say enough good things about it.
It fills and holds like two bags of feed.
It automatically dispenses and flows downwards.
They even thought about the fact
that by making this a point,
the chickens are not going to come up
and jump on here and poop all over it.
Adjustable legs and multiple feeding ports.
So the chickens never really fight about the food
because they have so many different options to choose from.
Likewise, their watering silo
is a series of different dispensers.
So the chickens have a lot more optionality,
they don't have to argue about who gets which one,
and they could all get plenty of water.
The other thing I like about it
is it has this kind of trough here,
which might help the water capture
and let the chickens drink a little bit easier.
And, of course, the main thing that I really like
is that, I'm sorry, Saffron,
is that instead of just five gallons, it's eight,
and it's a nice opaque material,
so it's not gonna have any mold growing in it.
It has a couple different options.
I opted for the spike option,
which means that this will get hammered into the ground
and sit firmly in the earth.
They also have an option where it has
like an X-platform so it just sits on a surface,
which could work if you have a flat surface.
But let's go ahead and just put this together
and see how it works.
So first step is you just hammer the stake into the ground.
I got a little piece of wood so I don't damage it as much.
But it probably doesn't matter,
'cause this collar slips right on top.
All right, so now the stake is in the ground.
Actually, really happy I got the stake one
'cause I don't think this is going anywhere.
There's no way the chickens are gonna dig that out.
Feels really good.
So this goes right on top,
and then this little beauty should slip right on.
So this is really great.
The nice thing about it is that it opens from here.
That's why I wanted to move it from that other area.
It would've blocked the entrance to the chicken coop.
And this is a pretty shady spot,
so the water shouldn't get hot.
So I'm very pleased with this,
I like that you could rotate it too,
and I think the chickens are gonna love it.
That's beautiful having eight gallons instead of five.
It's gonna make this chore a lot easier.
Let's talk really quickly about why I like this so much
besides the things I've mentioned.
I like these style waters a lot,
because they're really good at self-cleaning.
Now, for example, this is a other style cup
that is very common,
but you could see the problem, it's full of dirt,
chicken poop, feathers, who knows what else?
And the other thing is they could just stand on top of this
and poop right into the cup,
so that's not ideal for the chicken's health.
This is fantastic 'cause they come by, they tap,
they get as much water as they want.
It even has a little trough here
which helps them drink a little easier.
But it's not deep enough that it would get really dirty,
and it's really easy to just grab your hose
and basically just go like this and it's already clean.
So I'm really stoked about this,
I think it's gonna make life a lot easier
and the chickens are gonna love it.
So with this task done,
let's go talk about why I bought 400 pounds of sand
for my chickens.
Now why did I end up buying 400 pounds of sand?
Well, turns out that chickens don't bathe like we do,
they take dust baths.
So as we step over here,
you'll see that we're in the craters of the moon now,
which is the area where the chickens like to dust bathe.
What they do is they'll nestle into the ground,
sort of dig in a little hole,
and start throwing a bunch of dirt, sand,
whatever they have under their feathers.
What this does is it actually cleans them.
You might think, "That's not gonna clean them, Jacques,
they're gonna get really dirty."
Well, they're not trying to clean themselves
from dirt like we are.
They're unfortunately trying to clean themselves
from sort of parasitic pests,
like chicken mice, chicken lice,
chicken fleas I think are even a thing.
So basically what happens is that they take all the sand
and they throw it under their feathers,
and that grinds away any of those pests.
We had a recent issue with this actually,
which I'll mention.
Don't look it up, by the way, 'cause it's horrifying.
It's not something you wanna see,
it's not something you wanna deal with.
And that's why I'm doing this right now,
'cause I don't ever wanna do it again.
What happened was is that we had an unseasonably late
rainstorm in San Diego.
When I say unseasonably late,
I mean it rained in the summer,
which never happens.
And then, followed by that rain
is we had a bunch of humidity.
So all the ground was totally wet,
the chickens had nowhere to go to dust bathe,
and they actually got pretty wrecked with lice.
It was a sad moment, we had to deal with it.
We used diatomaceous earth,
which actually worked pretty well,
but it just wasn't a fun process.
And part of the reason is that our soil here
has a lot of clay and a lot of fine particles.
What that means is that basically once that gets wet,
it takes a really long time to dry out.
So what I did is I went to a local big box store
and I got washed plaster sand.
You could use a lot of different types of sand,
but the thing that you want to try to avoid at least
is you don't wanna get something that's unwashed,
'cause it's gonna have too much dust
and that's dangerous for the chickens to breathe in.
And you don't wanna get anything like playground sand
that's been rounded down to be soft,
because it's not going to clean the chickens very well.
So what I'm going to do with these sandbags
is actually spread it around everywhere
where the chickens like to dust bathe.
This is one of their favorite areas
'cause it's in the shade, it's protected under the tree.
And, honestly, these trees are probably part of the problem,
because wild birds will come nest in here.
But we're gonna add a bunch of sand to this area.
Right now it's wet, but it'll dry out quickly
and provide a great dust bath solution for these chickens.
Now if you're in an area, for example,
and you don't have somewhere like this to dump your sand,
what you could do is build
a little chicken dust bath center.
That's what I've done over here.
All I've done is I've taken a concrete mixing tub
and I've buried it in the ground a little bit
so it's more ground level,
I've filled it with that pure sand.
This gives them a clean option to always come out here,
it's in full sun, so it'll always dry out quickly,
and have their dust bathing.
I've seen them use it a little bit now,
it's only been here for a week
and chickens can be a little bit wary of new things,
but this is a great solution.
I've seen people also do it with tires for example,
but it kind of just provides a locked in area
where you know that sand's gonna stay sand
instead of being mixed in with a whole bunch of other stuff
and lose its effectiveness.
So that's kind of the happenings with the chicken orchard,
the chicken upgrades that we've made.
Overall, I'm very happy with how this is going.
I love this chicken orchard
and I'll probably end up putting maybe one more tree
right in front of me here
and maybe one more in the corner here,
because I love having the chickens with my trees
and they both do so well together.
So thanks for watching, and we'll see you next time.
(gentle music)