Little Fuzzy
Songster
- Jan 16, 2016
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What is this 'LAB'?
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I thought D/E would not hurt worms^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^This!
Depending on the size of the run dump a bag (or bags) of wood chips into the run...and all the brown material you can find such as dried leaves, drives grass clippings, garden debris, etc.,. If you don't have leaves on your property carry some garbage bags with you and raid the leaf piles in your local town that people put beside the street for disposal.
It's a "work in progress" so just keep adding brown stuff as you come upon it. Scatter some BOSS or scratch in the run all along to get the chickens to "fluff" things up all along. Every now and then you may have to use a fork to fluff it up or remove packed/matted litter. Using different things add variety for the chickens to pick through and keeps them busy (and out of trouble). Eventually you will build an ecosystem of bugs, worms, and micro-organisms that will be very healthy for your chickens. Do not use DE or any pesticides in the litter as it will kill the good bugs that you need to make this work well.
As time goes by a thickness of a foot is a good, but *any* carbon material added will help!
The grazing panels that henless mentioned work well in providing an added distraction and some nutrition to the run.
Best wishes,
Ed
I thought D/E would not hurt worms
Sure it will. It will hurt you if you inhale it or get it in your eyes. The more tender the tissue/membrane the more injurious I would believe it to be. It is non-specific in which bugs it kills. Worms may be deeper than most bugs and may or may not encounter it while it's dry and fresh. Other good bugs will encounter it in the upper levels. A lot of those are micro-sized critters that do a lot of good feeding and reproducing at the expense of the pest bugs. When a vacuum is created in our environment there will always be something to fill that void...usually something undesirable.I thought D/E would not hurt worms