And what matter would we be discussing today? It would be one of my favorite topics, poop! I'm one of those people who gets curious about weird things. You should see my DH get disgusted when we're butchering and I want to poke around the innards in the discard bucket. And I could spend hours conversing about the sociological impacts of zombie apocalypses. I want to know why and how and, well, you get my point.
Yesterday I had to replenish a couple of empty feed barrels. I picked up just enough to last (hopefully) til DH gets home to do the really heavy lifting. I used to be able to toss those 50 pound bags of feed over my shoulder and walk the distance to put them up. Sadly, those days are over. So I loaded them into the wheelbarrow to deliver them. And the whole way back to the barrels I was thinking, "so this is what 100 pounds in the wheelbarrow feels like."
After I got the feed unloaded I took the same wheelbarrow into the chicken coop to load up the poop mountain under the perch. It had been piling up for a few weeks because of the freezing temps but after two days of thawing, it was time to get it out of there! I knew it was going to take more than one trip to get it to the compost so I decided to pace myself instead of breaking my back on the first load. I filled the wheelbarrow about 1/3 full and started to take off. Whoa! That was definitely heavier than the 100 pounds of feed. Three more trips like that and I was done. I can safely say (without any scales or other scientific data) that I transported over 400 pounds of chicken poop.
But my curiosity is peaked again. In the time it took the chickens to eliminate 400 pounds of poop, they consumed less than 100 pounds of feed. How do they get that kind of return?
Of course I'm only joking. There was straw mixed in and they have really hit the water fount hard in the cold weather. I'm not surprised at how heavy the pile was. But I AM surprised that I survived all that lifting. Next up is the removal of the wasted hay pile in the goat pen. Fortunately it's raining hard today so I will get to that tomorrow. I wonder how much heavier it will be thanks to the showers. Hmmm.
