A bad morning

This is our heated chicken waterer. The red part attached to the white part with interlocking grooves. I am not fond of its design. It must be filled from the bottom and then flipped into an upright position. This process can’t be done without spillage. Everything that I’ve read about chickens in winter suggests that they can take about anything as long as the coop stays dry. Thus, during my morning chores, I remove the waterer from the coop as carefully as I can, trying (often in vain) to keep it straight so it doesn’t spill, and do all the water changing and flipping outside.

Heated waterer sitting on cement blocks. The cord is visible in the lower left.

All was going according to plan today until I dropped the waterer in the coop. Due to the cold temperatures this morning, I had not opened the coop door. A three-gallon waterer crashing to the floor was enough to cause an uproar among the chickens, let me tell you. Squawking and feathers everywhere. I picked up the waterer as quickly as possible and set it back outside. As the girls in the coop settled down, I heard clucking from the wrong direction. I looked outside again. There was Ellie, who is always curious about what is beyond the human door, walking around in the sunshine. Although she had never been on that side of the coop, her clucking did not suggest alarm. She seemed to know she was in the wrong place but was not able to figure out what she needed to do about it. She walked away from me when I tried to pick her up. After a few do-si-dos, she walked back inside on her own accord. I followed her and shut the door to the yard.

The wet bedding seemed to be confined to a square-foot area under the feeder. I used the dust pan to scoop it into the poop bucket, which was already mostly full from that morning’s clean up. We haven’t changed the wood chips in the coop since October so that the heat of the decomposing poop and wood chips helps warm the coop. Nevertheless, each morning we do try to remove the poop that is on the top to keep the odor down. The wet wood chips filled the poop bucket to capacity. I wiped the rest of the water off the floor with a paper towel and covered the spot with clean chips.

I looked at the waterer. It was a mess. It had poop and wood chips stuck all over it. I thought briefly about ignoring it. No, I told myself, do the grown-up thing. I took it to the laundry sink in the basement, leaving my coop boots at the door. I rinsed the dirt off of the outside, gave the inside of the reservoir and the trough a good wipe down using only water and a paper towel. Chickens, like most birds, are extremely sensitive to chemicals. I noticed that I had damaged the reservoir. The plastic showed signs of stress. I must have dropped it on the cement blocks that keep the waterer off the floor. If there was a hole in the reservoir, the water would drain out of the trough without stopping. I’d better check to see if it still holds water.

I attached the trough to the reservoir and pulled out the rubber plug. The faucet, of course, was not in the right position to fill the reservoir. I got the utility hose from under the sink and screwed it on. I filled the reservoir about halfway. In the process of trying to turn the waterer upright, the bottom came off. Water splashed up out of the sink and soaked my coat sleeve. A fair amount went on the floor also, which I discovered by stepping in it. This was not going well. I got an old towel from the back room and mopped up the floor.

I filled the reservoir again and managed to get it upright into the sink while the trough was still attached. The trough filled and the water stopped moving. Good. No holes. I turned it upside down again and filled it the rest of the way. I left it in the sink while I changed my socks. I put my boots back on and carried the waterer upside down to the coop, flipped it just before I went in, and set it carefully on the cement blocks.

I took the poop pail to the fiberglass green house to empty it into a muck bucket. Normally, this leaves the bucket clean. Why was I surprised when wet poop and wood chips stuck all over the sides? I went back to the coop to get the putty knife that we use for poop scraping and cleaned the bucket as best I could.

Now all I had to do was clean the laundry sink with a disinfecting wipe. I detached the utility hose and, underestimating the amount of water still in it, promptly emptied it onto the floor. Fortunately my socks were not involved this time, and the mop-up towel was ready at hand. After I sterilized the hose, the faucet, and the sink, I had to have a cup of tea to restore myself. I hate it when I make so much work for myself.
When I went to check on the girls later, everyone was calm again.

Hanging out in the coop