Chickens, Ducks, and Rabbits Livestock Tour

Chickens, Ducks, and Rabbits and the Livestock Enclosure

One of the most essential ecosystems of Mezzacello is the livestock. We keep all livestock (chickens, ducks, and rabbits) in the livestock shed on the southwest edge of the property. This makes care and maintenance easy and also allows us to collect and easily treat manures and other wastes in the most efficient and sanitary way. I’ve included a quick gallery of features here in this post. I detail the layout a bit more below the images.

Chicken and Duck Run

The Chicken and Duck Coop

Rabbit Warren and Linoleum Floors

The Main Axis and the Waste Leech Pit

A Drawing of the Livestock Layout

A hastily drawn schematic of the livestock and covered run as well as the storage shed and leech pit compost structures.

Details and Links

The livestock shed is a 10×12 shed on a 4″ thick concrete slab. The floor of the shed is covered in waterproof latex and then linoleum flooring. The shed is divided into two halves, the east half is for rabbits and feed storage and the west half is for the chickens and ducks. The poultry coop can be further divided into the hen laying section and the nursery/isolation half which can be separated by sliding doors. The eggs are collected from the rabbit warren side of the shed through a door hatch behind the egg-laying perch. Lastly I have multiple portable sinks.

The chicken run between the livestock shed and the storage shed is a covered run 10’x16′ long. The run, the walkway between the gardens and the sheds, and the coop interior are covered. In the run and walkways are covered in 4’x6′ rubber horse mattes. The coop uses plastic trays that 30″ x 48″ and make collecting and cleaning droppings. This makes cleaning and sterilizing the run super easy. There is a french drain at the eastern edge of the run that empties into a leech pit.

Waste to Compost

The compost bins are 1000L IBCs with custom front-loading doors that can be filled, sealed and loaded into the bioreactor to accelerate compost and neutralize the acids in chicken and duck wastes.