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.
3 comments:
A good dust bath (or ash bath) keeps the mites away! Mulch. That's a twist I haven't heard about!
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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