Dust bath

[gjoyner]

how do you make a dust bath and with what?

 

[ssteiner]

Actually, the chickens are specialists at "making" a dust bath.

Ingredients required:

1) Dirt
2) Chicken

The chicken will take care of the rest.

 

[Buff Hooligans]

Quote:
Ssteiner, that's what I was going to suggest, but you did it in a much cuter way.

Yup, dirt + chickens = dust bath.

If you wanted to make a special place for them, create a patch with just sand. But as long as there's dry, fluffy dirt around, they'll take care of the rest.

I occasionally hard-rake my run to keep the dirt from compacting.

 

[Nemo]

Doesn't even have to be "dirt". My chickens occasionally use the wood shavings in the coop.

 

[JoAnn_WI_4-H_Mom]

I placed a cat litter box of coarse sand in the pasture when I first set them out. They seem to like it. three tweenage birds at a time.

 

[goldenluver]

I built a square and put a bag of sand and a bag of top soil that I mixed about 4 cups of DE and mixed all together then added another 4 cups of DE to the top.

 

[Judy]

Quote:
You should really use DE much more sparingly than this. Not good for them to breathe it either.

 

[Fruit Juice]

Mine just dust bathe in the dirt. The dirt we have in our coop is clayish, so when it rains it turns to concrete. There is a space under the coop that is protectede from rain, so they just dust bathe there. And when its really hot out, they dig a hole and snuggle in the cool dirt.

 

[gjoyner]

soil..as in planting soil? the stuff you can get bags of at home depot?

 

[scooter147]

Apparently the best place to dust bathe is my SO's flower beds

me after my SO chases me with the hatchet after dust bathing, she won't admit it but she likes the chickens more.