Bee, I like your comments. I think that next season, when I clean up the garden... I'll build a pile right under the roosts. It's my usual MO to clean things out in the fall to make room for the winter's accumulation. But... perhaps I'm going at it all wrong! One of my concerns is that the walls of the coop are wafer board, and I don't want the mass and moisture of the DL building up against those walls. Perhaps it's time to consider adding an inner wall to keep the moisture off the outer wall. I have some steel roofing that would do the trick.