Thanks, Anne, tomorrow my poor handyman will shovel stinky mud all day.

In normal conditions, pine bark with poop on it is a wonderful addition to
the garden, and not much of a problem with normal rainfalls. In an
abnormally rainy year, it floats and the poop makes the mud reek and grows
flies.

Poor chickens!

Thanks for the hugs, it's been quite a week and it won't be over till
several major things are fixed (only one of which is the runoff!)

laurie

"Anne Lurie" wrote in message
om...
Laurie,

Two things came to mind just now: What about using something other than
2x4" to "hold the wire down" -- something like "earth staples," maybe
(used to anchor floating row cover) so the water would flow over.

Also, is it only the chicken manure that floats -- or does the pine bark
nugget mulch also float??? In which case, you might try removing the
mulch
entirely, or at least pushing it aside.

I realize that these are by no means permanent solutions, but they might
give you -- and the chickens -- a respite while you figure out a
solution.

{{{{Laurie}}}}

Anne Lurie
NE Raleigh



"laurie (Mother Mastiff)" wrote in
message ...
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.

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!)