Muddy around the barn

Almost 3 inches of rain coupled with overcast, cold weather has created a very muddy barnyard.  The cows come slogging through the muck to be milked in the morning and get mud all over the milking parlor.  To top it off, I discovered that my boots have a leak in them.

We all go marching through the mud and the muck

It just won't dry and we have to walk through it numerous times a day.  In the Spring I'll have to get a load of dirt delivered and try to spread it out to raise the level of the ground around the barn.

The chickens don't seem to let it bother them.

One of the reasons the mud hole is created right in from of the barn door is that we don't have gutters on the barn to re-direct the rainwater coming off of the roof of the barn.  The water then collects in a large mud hole that all the animals must trudge through.  Lots of the mud stays on the animal's hooves and is tracked off and re-deposited elsewhere.  This contributes to the mud hole getting larger and larger.

So I got the idea to put up gutters on the south side of the barn to help redirect some of that water.  I enlisted the help of my wife and in no time at all, we had 1/3 of it done.

Putting up gutters on the south side of the barn

The photo below shows how each end is capped off.  My plan is to run piping off of this and direct all the rainwater into water troughs for the cows, goats, and chickens.  

The end of the gutter

In no time at all our work was done and everything is installed.  I think these gutters are going to be a positive on several facets, namely, keeping water from pooling right in front of the barn door and two, collecting rainwater of of the barn roof will save us money.

We're done!

The photo above gives a good 'downstream' view of the new gutters on the south side of the barn.  The reason they are so muddy is that I used them as feeders when we raise our meat birds.  They work great as feed troughs for chickens if you are raising a bunch of birds.  I guess I'll have to purchase some more when our batch of meat birds arrive.