"Uh-oh" I thought, "I hope this isn't an infection..." (somewhat callously as my main concern was the price of antibiotics, ahem)
But she looked healthy enough, so I left her to it.
But yesterday she was still wheezing and sneezing and now the other two were as well.
OKAY! I thought. ENUFF! This needs investigating! I'll check over the roost box and see what I can see.
I'd been worried at there's a gap between the roof and the walls...
[the cross? Oh, that's from when our house was blessed in the new year. Someone decided the chickens deserved their own house blessing too. Anglicans, eh? :-P]
So I lifted up the roof flap, and discovered...
MOULD! EVERYWHERE!
The poor wee things! No wonder they've been wheezing. I would be too if I had damp on the walls. I hadn't noticed it as when I clean them out I only open their door, pull out the floor and shovel it into a trug. Not a spot of mould in sight down at the bottom of the roostbox... ho hum.
So off I went to get a bucket of soapy water, some bleach, and a pair of rubber gloves. Pooey litter was dumped, everything was scrubbed, and mouldy areas were bleached. Windows and doors were opened as much as possible [it was raining, like it has been every other day for the past month] to let the bleachy smell dissipate.
But it was still SO DAMP in there. How to dry it out?
This is when Bee-the-DIY-lunatic comes into her own *trumpet roll* (yeah, that's a thing)
Take:
1 bedroom lamp
1 fireglow lightbulb
1 leftover piece of wire you found on the fence in the front garden
1 extension cable
2 carrier bags to protect said extension cable from chicken poo
...et voila! One chicken-house-dryer-o-matic. I'm a genius, I know.
I decided not to leave it on overnight, for the small-yet-important reason that we do like to close our front door at night time. After I did some reading in bed, I also discovered that you shouldn't do this anyway - chickens are plenty warm enough under all those feathers, and heaters in a coop = potential for an uninvited chicken BBQ/ bonfire.
So, I'll probably switch it on when I'm around the house to speed up the drying process and then remove my beautiful contraption in a week or so. Apparently the key to a nice warm roost is good ventilation, so I'll just have to persuade Jon not to helpfully close all the ventilation holes when he's passing (likehedidlastnight).
Hopefully we'll then have asthma-free chooks, and I won't be tormented by the pitiful noise of a bunch of wheezy chickens!
Anyone have any other tips?
Bee x
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