Chickens and grass seed?

[mcdze]

not really sure your setup .. i'll tell you what can come in handy around a coop though is simple pavers like the cheap 2' squares you can find anywhere.. maybe put some kind of raked up litter or otherwise in there and toss in some pavers on top to make a walkway or whatever seems logical to your layout .. im sure hosing or shoveling them off would be a daily part of the scheme but it would at least keep some islands in the mud so to speak ...

 

[paintedChix]

I can think of several options:

a) put litter in the run (wood chips, dead leaves, anything else that's handy). When it's deep enough, it'll keep the chickens out of the mud, and they can scratch around in it looking for bugs. It will gradually rot away, so you have to keep adding more, but wood chips do last quite a while because they rot so slowly.

b) build another run, and use it while the grass seed is getting started. Unfortunately, you need a really BIG run to have the grass stay alive while the chickens are in there (something like an entire backyard for half a dozen chickens). Swapping back and forth with two runs, you might be able to get grass growing in one about the time the chickens kill it in the other. But you would probably still be replanting it frequently, which doesn't help much with the mud.

c) make a frame that sits on the ground, with wire mesh on top of the frame. The grass grows underneath and and pokes up through the wire mesh. The chickens can walk on the wire and eat the grass that comes through, but they cannot scratch up the roots, so they don't kill the grass. If you do this, you will want to leave part of the run without the wire mesh, so the chickens have a place to scratch and dustbathe and walk on something that's not wire mesh. But you could do a large part of the run that way if you wanted.

Frames like that are often called "grazing frames"--I think if you search, you will find several threads about them.

Sorry, I don't know what specific kinds of grass would be better or worse for your purpose.

^ ditto above^

Lots of threads on DLM (Deep Litter Method - as described above) and on Grazing Frames...

To get you started on DLM - here's my photos of ours - DLM

and here are several threads -

ChrisnTiff(2007) - Deep Litter Method -
Mac (11/11/2007) - Deep Litter Method
The Poultry site - 8/22/2005 - Litter Quality & Broiler Performance -

I think there is a couple of threads including several pics/vids on the grazing frames right on the first two pages of the Feeding & watering your flock section...

Edit to add -
Grazing Frame - Fodder Table
Do you grow Fodder for your chickens?

There were 920 results when I searched "Grazing Frames" in the search bar above...



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