35 Pigeons And A Whole Lot Of Poop

After the chickens' room was cleaned (see previous post), I started in on the pigeons' room. I opened their window so they could get out if I bothered them, but they all stayed inside. The litter/poop mix on the floor was mostly about 8" deep and I had to leave islands of it where birds were already nesting:

Apparently I did something which alarmed them, and ten birds flew out the window:

Confused and frightened, they flew too far away and then, exhausted, (fantails are not built for flying) they were stranded out in the field and the lawn. I tried herding them like I did the chickens but it didn't work very well:

I finally got 7 of them atop the milk room roof near their window and two atop the barn roof but on the wrong side. I became so exhausted that I never finished cleaning the pigeon room. I put everything back and left the window open, hoping all the birds would find their way back home:

All but two fantail pigeons went back into the barn but the last two seemed confused and they huddled together on the roof of the milk room, with their open window in sight - but they didn't go in. I was so tired and sore that I would have liked to go to bed early but had to wait until after dark. Then I went out and found the two pigeons still huddled together but low enough for me to grab them, one at a time, and put them inside their room.

The next morning, I was determined to finish the job and once again began hauling totes filled with crap out to the tractor bucket (I left the screen up in the pigeons' window this time so they'd stay inside):

After each load, I'd work again on cleaning up waste hay, exposing even more ice which had been hidden and insulated by the thick layer of hay. Then I'd return to the barn and fill up another tractor bucket with poop:

When their room was clean, I put down sweet smelling pine shavings and some hay for them to use when building nests. I counted and was pleased to discover all 35 birds were still there:

I am contemplating selling a few birds - or even better, trading them for new birds to enlarge the gene pool. This is the time of year to give it a try:

But for now the birds are happy, healthy and clean:

And yet my work was not over. There was yet more waste hay where the bales had been stored, hay which had been frozen and fallen off the bales when I pulled it up out of the snow. I began loading the tractor bucket with that hay and hauling it too to the compost pile. Ah, spring. It's not all sunshine and daffodils: