There are many deeply rewarding experiences on the farm; cleaning the brooder house is not one of them.  Although a nastier chore certainly must exist, an example evades me at the moment due to the oh-so-fresh memory of today's cleaning.

Definition - brooder house (as applicable to our farm):  The place where baby chicks live until old enough to move to pasture. 

Our brooder house is an old, old, (keep going... old, old, old) barn-like structure.  From what we gather, our farm (prior to it being "our farm") was in the same family for three generations.  This information comes from various neighbors' reminiscing.  The grandfather gave it to his son, who gave it to his son, who sold it to us. The son who sold it to us was no spring chicken (pardon please... not venturing to guess an age but definitely cruising his twilight years) and given the construction style, it would be a reasonable expectation to date the brooder house 80-90 years old, likely more. 

A key point is that, at no time during the building's existence had cleaning ever occurred.  Imagine the worst haunted house movie you've ever seen and mega-multiply the height and depth of those cob webs hanging from door frames, smothering light fixtures, darkening the windows and it still wouldn't be as nasty as the condition of the brooder house when we moved here.

This may not be true for men but speaking from a woman's perspective, the greatest joy in cleaning is when the object to be cleaned is significantly dirty.   There is no pleasure in cleaning a slightly used water glass.   Come on!  Give us a dirty, greasy spaghetti dish; a swipe here, a swipe there and voila... a sparkling, shiny dish fit for the next meal.

The original cleaning of the brooder house was very rewarding.  With every swipe, something better-than-expected appeared.  We found concrete under the dirt floor and figured out at one point it may originally have been the farm's combo cow-milking / hog butchering spot.  A little paint, a cute picket fence and it's former dreary look was gone.

A newly cleaned brooder house is such a nice place.  Before the baby chicks arrive, we generously cover the floor with 6-8 inches of fresh wood shavings and hang shiny red heat lamps to keep the babies warm.  I wish you could see the place the day the chicks arrive.  Tiny little bundles, huddled under the red lights with their cute little feeders and waterers conveniently placed so no chick has to venture far for food or water. 

The chicks are in the brooder house only long enough to grow a bit and acclimate to the outside environment.  If we are raising "layers" (hens to eventually lay eggs) they grow much slower, whereas if the chicks are "broilers" (meat birds), they may only be in the brooder house a couple weeks in warm seasons or a month if we are raising them in the colder seasons.

One end of the brooder house opens to a fenced outside area so in any weather the chicks have opportunity to venture out and start pecking at grass and dusting themselves in the dirt as they get a bit bigger.

It all sounds so charming, doesn't it?  Sweet baby chicks, fresh fluffy wood shavings, the sun shining on these precious little darlings as they meander about gleefully discovering the wonderful life of a soon-to-be free-range pasture chicken.

Come on, people!  What are we forgetting? 

Yes.. you guessed it...   THE POO !

Chickens poo.  They poo and poo and then poo some more.  They poo A LOT.  It isn't just our chickens; it is chickens everywhere doing lots of pooing.  Did you know that last August, Beijing, China opened their first bio-gas plant using chicken poo as the fuel source?  In October, 2008, a similar-type plant opened in the Netherlands that was even BIGGER than the one in China.

When I say we end up with a lot of poo in our brooder house, it doesn't mean we have a poo problem or more poo than anyone else raising chickens.  Chickens poo.  That is the plain and simple truth of the matter.

Thanks to generous use of wood shavings, the poo isn't troublesome until chicks move to pasture when brooder house cleaning day arrives and shavings are relocated to the compost pile. 

Poo settles.  It slides down beneath the wood shavings and it isn't until the shavings are removed that it occurs to you what used to be a concrete floor has now become a poo floor.  Yep... that's right.  And then the scraping begins.  Shovel after shovel after shovel of poo slowly and laboriously must be scraped up until once again concrete appears.

Like a dirty greasy spaghetti dish being cleaned, eventually the brooder house looks good again, ready for the next batch of chicks.

A customer the other day asked if he could have some of our brooder house compost.  We told him, certainly, there was plenty to share.  He said he would return with his trailer.  His wife asked why he wasn't bringing the car.  He looked at her sweetly, smiled and said he'd be happy to bring the car but didn't think she'd like the smell of chicken poo in the trunk.  We all smiled.  Sometimes it takes a minute to see the big picture.