Yes - are you asking because of the picture? They are standing outside of the big run on the bare ground / frozen & thawing cardboard you see there. But no, when they go outside and walk through puddles, there's nothing I can do to keep their feet dry!Are you keeping your chickens dry, CB ?
We were all out there because I was working to remove the wire skirt at the door because a corner of it was coming up and interfering with the door. I do not like the door arrangement with this run, it grazes the ground. I wish it were 6"-9" off the ground like a ship's setup. I remembered I need to be able to chip packed snow and ice away to open the door and the skirt section will get destroyed if it's there. I think the packed shale driveway, which is the base the runs are on, is going to stop a digger in winter, and that's the only spot there's no skirt. The cardboard was handy covering a corner of hardware cloth so nobody tripped on it. I removed it, both Popcorn and Peanut think wet cardboard is a great thing to eat. I put two nails into the shale to hold the HC corner down.
The run floor is mostly dry except near the entrance where I track in snow, and some rain and snow get in through the gaps of the frame. The floor of the run is litter about 4-6" deep now of pine wood chips at the bottom, then hemp, oak leaves, rice hulls and aspen shavings. Well, they love to dig holes so it's actually 0-6+". For the door area, I put a 1x5 or 6 old board across the entrance to keep the litter in, and then a quarter log from our wood pile inside that so they can walk over the threshhold and jump down when going in and out. This year I didn't take much from the aged ramial pile of power company chipped stuff as I had planned because the Summer and Fall was so wet and I found lots of mushrooms and forest mold growing in it. I did take some from the very top which was sun-bleached.
I found three roof leaks in the big run which have been patched and those areas refreshed with piles of dry stuff on top. I can't keep the ground from soaking upwards into the litter a couple inches, but above that it's dry as I keep adding more. Their little run however is bone-dry with the same litter, except it's mostly hemp, rice hulls and small -animal aspen shavings. They dustbathe in that under the coop next to the coop warmer.
Sorry for the long post!
Can't tell if this is Popcorn or Butters, I think Popcorn:
[Edit - Butters has almost no spurs, really "clean" legs, so now I think it is her. Usually I go by their face]
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