TLP Shop Lab

Hi pariusa, glad to hear that you found this useful.

Thank you for your comments. I also enjoyed reading your instructable and watching your video. I was amazed by the amount of gardening you were able do in your balcony.

Thank you for the extra tip jmh06. Looks like DE gets rid of bugs outside and inside.

Good luck with getting started with your chickens! Thank you for the tip on DE on storing food. I once had a bag of cracked corn get taken over by a small slow moving bug I had never seen before. If I knew to put a little DE in it, I could have kept it for longer.

Thank you for your interest. The main picture has in the middle tray: cucumbers (front right), beans (front left), Squash (middle right) and Snow Peas (back). The tray on the right has some succulents that we are trying to propagate. In the second to last photo, we have Curly Leaf Kale, Romansco Broccoli, Tong Ho (Asian vegetable), Lettuce and Shallots. They are all getting ready to go into the garden!

itsjustmescotty, Thank you for sharing your experience and pictures. I hear you about the laying boxes. My hens only spend about 10 minutes each in there a day to lay their eggs. It's hard to see something you spend effort on not get used. In our first coop, I also had roost at two different heights. They always crowded on to the higher one.

nj_hou, Thanks for your feedback. Hopefully you'll start your chicken adventures soon.

Thanks for your feedback. Good luck with your new chicks!

PJSolarz, thank you for adding information on how the diatomaceous earth works.

That's great advise. Also, don't let them alone in your vegetable garden. It's amazing the amount of damage they can do unsupervised.

tipigeon, there are several reasons I prefer wood shavings. I did try hay in the beginning as well. First and foremost, I feel that the wood shavings work better in the coop. They are more absorbent. Also, when the hens do their business, the wood shavings clump around the manure and it makes for easier cleaning. Many times, we clean the coop of the poo and soiled shavings by taking out scoops of the clumps. It goes quick and we only need to remove a small portion of the shavings to clean the coop. I think it would be more difficult with hay. Second, it is a bit more tidy. I get the 6.5 cubic foot bags and a few of them fit into my car along with feed without causing any mess. Hay is not bad, but is messier and takes up more space. The wood shavings are really compacted down, s…

tipigeon, there are several reasons I prefer wood shavings. I did try hay in the beginning as well. First and foremost, I feel that the wood shavings work better in the coop. They are more absorbent. Also, when the hens do their business, the wood shavings clump around the manure and it makes for easier cleaning. Many times, we clean the coop of the poo and soiled shavings by taking out scoops of the clumps. It goes quick and we only need to remove a small portion of the shavings to clean the coop. I think it would be more difficult with hay. Second, it is a bit more tidy. I get the 6.5 cubic foot bags and a few of them fit into my car along with feed without causing any mess. Hay is not bad, but is messier and takes up more space. The wood shavings are really compacted down, so when you open the bag, they expand quite a bit. Finally, we are able to throw the used wood shavings into our small compost pile. Hay would take much longer to break down in our small pile. Thanks for comments and interest!

LynxSys, thank you for your feedback. Debeaking sounds pretty awful. That's another reason I prefer to buy chicks at a feed store. You know exactly what you are getting.

Hi reginaann, since you have more and larger wild animals up there, you will probably want to make everything more robust than I did. I have learned that chicken wire is for keeping chickens in, not so much for keeping wild animals out. That's why I made my second run and coop with hardware cloth. Good luck with your coop!

warriorthos2, thank you for your comment. It's not easy putting together a detailed instructable. Your green house and storage shed projects are very impressive.

Thanks Steven. Yes, they have a great variety of organic non-gmo seeds. Hopefully all of our support will help keep them in business.