I know what you saying. Really a lot of us could easily have some of those conditions, but for putting on our thinking caps. Like this place for example.....I live in a wet area. I'm almost completely surrounded by swamplands/wetlands. You know that the chickens will eat anything green and completely wipe out all the grass in a very short time.
Having read about poultry keeping as all of you have, I know to give them something to scratch around in, so I rake up the oak leaves or pine/cypress needles and throw them onto the coop ground/floor. I do it because it makes them happy, to give them a few fresh bugs and possibly a blade of grass that snuck its way in and because I want to prepare for the rainy weather. When it rains and I don't have enough leaves, not only will I have to wade through muddy yuck, but my chickens will be dirty. It could even be deadly for them, as I mentioned on an earlier post. Then the girls will fly up to the nesting boxes and dirty that up and might not even want to come down.....can you blame them, so I avoid this problem by keeping my eyes open and tending to it.
But most people from my area don't necessarily think about chickens like me. They just set up a coop and bought the chicks and feed and didn't think about immunizations, raccoons, rooster to hen ratios.....well why would they? They didn't study up on it. I find that one good thing about the local Cajun people is that they are friendly to one another and visit from time to time, esp when they have common interests. The chicken friends I had that visited, all compared notes and checked each other's coops and runs out and talked chicken to one another. I find that by doing that, we educate each other. I know there are a lot of people that would read this and 'infection control' would pop up in their heads and I can't argue that, but I find you can teach people a lot if you want to.
Having read about poultry keeping as all of you have, I know to give them something to scratch around in, so I rake up the oak leaves or pine/cypress needles and throw them onto the coop ground/floor. I do it because it makes them happy, to give them a few fresh bugs and possibly a blade of grass that snuck its way in and because I want to prepare for the rainy weather. When it rains and I don't have enough leaves, not only will I have to wade through muddy yuck, but my chickens will be dirty. It could even be deadly for them, as I mentioned on an earlier post. Then the girls will fly up to the nesting boxes and dirty that up and might not even want to come down.....can you blame them, so I avoid this problem by keeping my eyes open and tending to it.
But most people from my area don't necessarily think about chickens like me. They just set up a coop and bought the chicks and feed and didn't think about immunizations, raccoons, rooster to hen ratios.....well why would they? They didn't study up on it. I find that one good thing about the local Cajun people is that they are friendly to one another and visit from time to time, esp when they have common interests. The chicken friends I had that visited, all compared notes and checked each other's coops and runs out and talked chicken to one another. I find that by doing that, we educate each other. I know there are a lot of people that would read this and 'infection control' would pop up in their heads and I can't argue that, but I find you can teach people a lot if you want to.
