In article , laurie (Mother Mastiff) wrote:
Thanks, guys!

No, moving the coop is not an option. It is a former 20x30 tractor shed of
which 20x20 is the chicken house and the rest is storage, there are chicken
yards and pens on the west (uphill) side of the building, the ground is
clay, the lot continues to slope down past the chicken house, but the use of
2x4s at the bottoms of the pens to hold the wire down also catches water. I
use pine bark nuggets on the ground in the pens to catch the poo, because
when it is "used", it is so great in the garden, but in flood situations, it
all floats and plugs any drainage holes and mini ditches my poor handyman
had laboriously dug.

I use the 5x20 front hall for my youngest, most delicate or most valuable
birds, and it is literally five inches deep in pooey mud. I totally lost my
gardening clogs in it today! While much of the water in the front hall came
from the pipe, a lot also came across the yard, under the tractor shed area,
under the wall, and into the front hall and main room of the laying house.


While the diversion will take care of most of the water it won't affect
what comes off the shed and what falls on the pen itself. Another two
yards of gravel would raise the 5X20 area by 6 inches. But you might
only need 3 inches or a portion of it raised to get the birdsw out of
the 5 inches of mud.


A friend came over today and dug up the end of the pipe (apparently run
BESIDE the electric line to run future lines through, if desired). He
plugged the end with waterproof cement. The ground is so saturated, he hit
water long before he found the pipe, and he had a heck of a time cutting the
unwanted pipe off outside the building to plug it. Says it is going to take
10 yards of river gravel and a lot of pipe and landscape fabric, but that he
could put in a drainage ditch that would divert the runoff from the yard
safely past the chicken house.

Going to cost more than my first three vehicles. And I have been out of
work a while due to the economy.

Anyone want to hire a very good technical writer and web
designer/maintainer?

laurie (Mother Mastiff)

"Baine Carruthers" wrote in message
...
Laurie

I don't guess moving the coop isn't an option. I had a similar situation
with a pheasant pen that was built during the drought and without thoughts
of "normal" weather. I had to install a 4" drain and cover with coarse
sand(I needed the sand for dusting anyway). I did have slope away from
flight pen and this worked rather well except for some edges around the
pen
with high traffic area and lots of red clay.

Baine

"laurie (Mother Mastiff)" wrote in
message ...
My lot is all downhill, and unfortunately that's where the chicken house
is.
There is a new problem with a pipe underground that was supposed to
protect
and house an electric line (never used) that now seems to collect water
from
the yard and pour it out into the chicken house (because the top of the
pips
is lower than the level of the ground it is draining from). This alone
causes flooding and deaths in the chick pen. Hard rains like the recent
storms soak much of the chicken house and pens, and poo-laced mud is
unhealthy for the birds as well as nasty for the neighbors' delicate
noses.

I need an intelligent, inventive drainage person who is clever with
ditches
and drainage devices, can you recommend anyone? I am out of work so
will
have to use my regular lawn guy for the labor, what I need is a
diagnosis
and practical, usable solutions.

Desperately,

laurie (Mother Mastiff) (very worried about the young birds who are
swimming
in a lake of poo-ey mud and don't have webbed feet!)









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