I've seen a lot of topics and pictures of chickens taking dust baths and I'm beginning to get a little worried. Our property is mostly a pile of rocks. Where there aren't rocks it's heavy vegetation and we get a lot of rain. Kodiak is actually considered a northern tropical climate (we've had over 10 inches of rain in May alone!) I don't have any dust piles or open dirt that the girls can take dust baths in. Can I make one? They'll be in coop with a covered run and I haven't yet decided if I'm going to put a sub-floor in or leave it on the bare earth (that's my preference but worried about predators). They'll be able to roam the yard when we're home but there still aren't many areas with good, dry, dusty soil for them to bathe in. Any ideas?
If you have part of the run covered they will pick all the grass from it and the soil will dry. When it dries they will make dust pits in it. If you leave the ground floor they will dust in that also. One thing you can do is when you clean out a wood fire place put the ashes in a large box and put that in the coop, they will love it. We have birds that love to dust in fresh shavings and sand also.
Depending on the size of your run you can put a kiddie pool with dirt/sand in it. Or you could make a sandbox and put either dirt or sand it there as well.
I used a 3 ft. kiddie pool with sand and Stall Dry (and soon to be adding Perma Guard, now that I found a place to buy it).
The kiddie pool is a great idea! I'm already planning on getting one for the ducks to swim in so I can pick one up for the chickens to dust bathe in. Thanks! (ps - I see my run getting larger and larger and larger!!!)
You can give fire place ashes to the birds? That is a great idea, but I wouldn't have thought it was safe. Rachel
Thats what we were told, the ashes act like DE or something, the ash will irritate the mites and other pests.
