mojojojojo
In the Brooder
Hi, I’m a new chicken keeper, just got four young pullets in mid june 2021, they are currently 4 months old as of mid Aug 2021. They are supposed to be 2 golden comets and 2 australorps. The two australorps are mostly black with some white feathers and one of them has especially fluffy feet, the other one has wayy more red feathers around the neck.
I specially bought a kiddy pool and filled that with dirt and sand. Drilled plenty of holes in the bottom. The kiddy pool is about 8” tall i guess. I always fill the pool with dirt/sand about 3” deep.
First i tried with DE, dirt and some sand. about a 1:2:1 ratio respectively. apparently the rain tends to clump it all up and i often have to use a stick to separate it when it’s drained and dries and use the stick again....
now that didn’t seem to work so well, so i dumped it all out and bought playsand, and DE, about 3:1 ratio respectively... this worked fine for awhile but after a big storm everything clumps up again...
the brown pullets do explore the dust bath more, the black ones just keep pecking at it. The brown pullets have been seen scratching at the sand several times. On a rare occasion i have seen the brown ones try to dust bathe in there and the black ones just keep walking around it. One day i saw them actually burrowing into the dry dirt underneath one of my wooden posts. Orange ones would fluff the dirt and lay sideways but the black ones kinda just sit there and chilled. I spend a lot of time with my chickens and that dust bathing only happened one time. I’m not too worried about where they want to create a dust bath, just not trying to encourage the bathing right underneath the post since the post is only 2 feet deep.
These pullets were with older chickens when they were younger than 2 months old, i’m not sure how much they learnt from the other chickens, but now they are in the coop and run by themselves so i’m not sure how else to teach them that. the rest of the time they just walk around the run and sit in shaded areas. I live in south carolina so it’s mostly warm and occasional thunderstorms. their coop and run happened to be positioned on a part of land that was somewhat uneven, i have placed the dust bath container on the higher part of the slope so it doesn’t sit in the part that floods after a heavy storm.
It’s troublesome to keep “unclumping” the stuff in the container, and they also started to poop in it. Question, do chickens try to not poop in bathing areas?? or is that normal?? Are they pooping in it because they don’t consider that a bathing zone??
The pictures of the dust bath are weeks ago, but it seems like they might have liked it more??? I changed to sand because i felt it wouldn’t clump as much... The very first picture was just taken this weekend, supervised free ranging.
Thankful for all advice regarding dust bathing!
I specially bought a kiddy pool and filled that with dirt and sand. Drilled plenty of holes in the bottom. The kiddy pool is about 8” tall i guess. I always fill the pool with dirt/sand about 3” deep.
First i tried with DE, dirt and some sand. about a 1:2:1 ratio respectively. apparently the rain tends to clump it all up and i often have to use a stick to separate it when it’s drained and dries and use the stick again....
now that didn’t seem to work so well, so i dumped it all out and bought playsand, and DE, about 3:1 ratio respectively... this worked fine for awhile but after a big storm everything clumps up again...
the brown pullets do explore the dust bath more, the black ones just keep pecking at it. The brown pullets have been seen scratching at the sand several times. On a rare occasion i have seen the brown ones try to dust bathe in there and the black ones just keep walking around it. One day i saw them actually burrowing into the dry dirt underneath one of my wooden posts. Orange ones would fluff the dirt and lay sideways but the black ones kinda just sit there and chilled. I spend a lot of time with my chickens and that dust bathing only happened one time. I’m not too worried about where they want to create a dust bath, just not trying to encourage the bathing right underneath the post since the post is only 2 feet deep.
These pullets were with older chickens when they were younger than 2 months old, i’m not sure how much they learnt from the other chickens, but now they are in the coop and run by themselves so i’m not sure how else to teach them that. the rest of the time they just walk around the run and sit in shaded areas. I live in south carolina so it’s mostly warm and occasional thunderstorms. their coop and run happened to be positioned on a part of land that was somewhat uneven, i have placed the dust bath container on the higher part of the slope so it doesn’t sit in the part that floods after a heavy storm.
It’s troublesome to keep “unclumping” the stuff in the container, and they also started to poop in it. Question, do chickens try to not poop in bathing areas?? or is that normal?? Are they pooping in it because they don’t consider that a bathing zone??
The pictures of the dust bath are weeks ago, but it seems like they might have liked it more??? I changed to sand because i felt it wouldn’t clump as much... The very first picture was just taken this weekend, supervised free ranging.
Thankful for all advice regarding dust bathing!
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since it got muddy, it basically took forever to dry out and basically didn’t dry out... i stirred the mixture to help dry and came back next day it was like a sludge so they just couldn’t use it... so i dumped it out. not looking to have to change this out weekly. Any suggestions on rigging some sort of shade for this??
