I have two ways that I water the soil blocks:

• The best way is using a misting nozzle called “Fogg-it” made by the Fogg-it Nozzle Company in Belmont, California. It is rated at 1/2 gpm and is made of solid brass. The main nozzle has three small fog nozzles on it. If you use it with good clean water, it should last a long time.

• The second way is to put the tray (which has drainage slots in the bottom) inside a solid tray that has about an inch of water in it. This lets the soil blocks gently soak up water from the bottom. I usually just use this method when I have neglected them too long and the blocks have really started to dry out too much.

I probably water them less than most folks recommend. I have found that I have fewer problems when I keep them just barely moist.

Just wondering how you water your soil blockers?

Every chicken coop that I build is going to be “the best”, yet I always end up finding things that I would do differently next time. I have a nice design that I will modify next time to incorporate the new ideas, but that one is now at our son and daughter-in-law’s house. He has made several of the modifications on it that I was planning to make on the next design.

What is your new coop going to be like? Mine are all designed to keep the chickens cool during the summer heat (in the past, I’ve lost chickens to the heat but never due to the cold) and shelter them from the rain and predators.

The basic box without the partition is what I used for my hen that just hatched out 7 chicks, and it works great for that. I’ll do a post with photos in the next day or two (photos of day-old chicks are hard to pass up!).

One thing that I did was cut one extra piece of the liner. In spite of everything, there will always be an occasional broken egg, and hens will continue to make a mess every once in a while. It’s a lot easier to just switch out the liners so you can hose off the dirty one and let it dry out.