Mulch Bath!

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This morning I drove over to the municipal mulch pile (with the million-dollar view of the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate Bridge) and filled up a car-load of mulch.  I've worked out a pretty good system.  I transport everything in five gallon paint buckets, which I borrow from work.  They're just the right size, not too heavy or awkward.  I can scoop up thirty-five gallons of free mulch in a mere minutes.

Half the mulch was dug into our soil, and the other half went into our chickens' run.  The girls seemed to approve.  They dug chicken-sized holes and indulged in a frenzy of mulch-bathing.

When I was first researching chickens, I read a lot of online discussions where new chicken-keepers thought their animals were having seizures, when they were in fact dust-bathing.  Chickens flopping around with a sort of dazed expression, making unusual noises, while kicking dirt all over themselves?  Totally normal.

Comments

Kurious Jo said…
A good dust bath (or ash bath) keeps the mites away! Mulch. That's a twist I haven't heard about!
Anonymous said…
Our Chickens love to take their baths under the carriage stored in the arena. There are feathers everywhere under it and it is really dusty soil. They have a bin of ashes available in their coop, but it doesn't get much use.

Larvalady_ZZ
Our girls love to dust bathe in anything loose, from sawdust, to gravel. Yours look very mu(l)ch contented! ;)

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