Keeping the turf alive

[QuackyMomma]

I'm relatively new to having chickens. We live in a densely populated inner city suburb on a 600m2 block of land with a new house and subtropical landscaping. My hens have a hen house where they sleep at night and during the day they can roam around the area in front of their coop. I fenced off this area with something I can best call "port-a-fence". When they were mini chickens I let them roam around the entire backyard but this proved to be unmanageable as they dug up so many plants and pooped all over the patio. Their fenced off area is about 5x5 metres and covered with lush green turf. The idea is to move the fence around every week or two e.g. create a fenced off area to the left of the coop and then move it to the right side, to give the turf ability to "breathe" and recover.

I just moved the fence for the first time today and now I'm ready to "treat" the soiled area. The city council's website recommends lime and I bought a bag of this stuff in the produce store this weekend. This is supposed to help with the acidity of chicken poop and also help with the flies (currently no problem with bugs, winter time). I have the bag at home, it's called hydrated lime but I'm not sure what to do with it.

Do I put some in the bucket e.g. about 2kg and just sprinkle it around on the turf? I have no idea how aggressive this powder is but it sure feels like some serious stuff. I carried the bag from the car to the garage and this was enough to give me itchy hands. Will it not kill my turf?
Do you have any other advice for keeping my turf lush and green?
Perhaps I'm a bit paranoid. The turf is dense and well established, it still looks very good. The only damage is a couple of holes dug up by the ducks and lots of feathers on the ground. I rake the feathers every once in a while, there's a few more white feathers on the ground at the moment as the flock has been squabbling with the new duck and pulling her feathers out. Otherwise the soiled area has lots of poops on it but it's not too bad... a bit of rain and it gets washed into the turf.

 

[Bens-Hens]

I would move my little portable coop once a day when I had six smaller birds growing out. The next hatch we had 12 in there, I moved it morning and afternoon.

The chicks would peck the lawn, poop and if there was a thin patch dig for the sand. I did not add anything to the lawn, just gave it a good water in to rinse down the poop. I would sometimes throw in weeds etc I had dug up, so I would rake the area from time to time.

I found that it took about 2 weeks for the lawn patch to bounce back, my yard ( a little bigger than yours but not much) had little grid rectangles all over it, but when the lawn came back, it came back really strong. Being winter, the lawn will not grow back as fast, but as spring comes around it will take off like wildfire.

I used lime in my coop and run area, just spread it on the ground and watered it in the next day, but that was on sand. I did notice that it did not kill the few weeds etc growing in there though.

You may find that you have to move your fence more often, or even pen them in their run and ration the lawn time they get to allow the lawn to recover.

We let ours our for the last couple of hours of light, that way they put themselves to bed and we don't have to herd them back to the run.

Here is our small coop, they are all in the main run now.

 

[Ridgerunner]

We all have our own unique conditions and those conditions change with the seasons. What kind of sun and rain you get makes a big difference in how well that turf lasts, as does how many chickens or ducks you might have on it. That’s a big run. Under the right climate conditions, that could hold up pretty well. I use electric netting to contain mine in an area equivalent to what you described. I don’t even have to move it during the summer and I have a fair amount of chickens on it. A lot of those chickens are young which makes a difference too. In the winter with a lot fewer chickens, they can wipe it out since it quits growing. I do move it then. It sounds like yours grows year-round.

Rain makes a difference too. If it stays dry, smell and flies are not going to be a problem unless it builds up. Depending on how many chickens and ducks are on it, that build-up is much more likely in the coop than the run. The coop is probably where you need to do your poop management. Even if it is wet, if the poop is well spread out it’s probably not going to cause a problem. If you get a lot of rain, it might just wash the poop off into the runoff.

You might let experience be a guide before you do a lot of treatment. If you don’t have any smell or flies from the run, why treat the run?

The lime presents another potential problem for the grass. Lime raises pH and makes the soil less acidic. The perfect pH for grass is somewhere around 6.0 to 7.0 with 7.0 being neutral, neither acidic nor alkaline. Some soils are naturally acidic (low pH) and some are naturally alkaline (high pH). Lime is often added to acidic soils to improve grass growth. To further complicate it, pure chicken manure tends to be neutral or alkaline, depending on what they eat. You really need to do a soils analysis to determine the pH of the soil to see if adding lime will do more harm than good.

Hydrated lime is caustic when wet. I’ve never used it around chickens or any animals so I won’t comment on that.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Ridgerunner is helpful as always.

Whenever we hear people say that chicken manure is acidic we have to question that. Garden Lime is calcium carbonate as is the calcium carbonate used in Layer feed to provide calcium. A portion of the unused calcium carbonate gets passed through the chickens and onto the ground. This is beneficial to soils that are acidic, but will build up relatively quickly on soils that are more alkaline by nature.

 

[Bens-Hens]

"Hydrated lime is caustic when wet. I’ve never used it around chickens or any animals so I won’t comment on that".

(Sorry, my quote function seems to be playing up) I should probably add that we did not have birds at the time we used lime, our run was empty as we were recovering from MD.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Fred, in compost, the chicken manure provides calcium to help with blossom end rot. I like compost, especially when chicken manure is part of the recipe.

 

[lazy gardener]

I hope you folks don't mind if I jump in here just to express my enthusiasm! I'm starting with chickens after a 25 year hiatus... thoroughly enjoying the experience. Have 5 layers, 164' electronet with 8 x 8 coop inside with 4 x 8 loft. Deep litter in both levels. Plan to run chickens in garden after harvest. Can't wait to see what they do for soil, weed and insect management towards next years garden which is about 40' x 40' including raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, and asparagus. In your experience, when I turn the girls loose in late September or early October, will they do enough damage to uproot my berries or asparagus? Whole garden is under permanent mulch (currently spoiled hay, some straw, wood/bark chips under blue and strawberries.)

 

[QuackyMomma]

Okay... I'm going to report on recent developments. Everything was fine this week... until today. I was happy to see that the turf didn't suffer too much. There were two minor holes in the turf - duck work. We were away for the weekend and our friend fed the animals, locked them in and let them out in the morning. This morning, Donald the duck did his thing with his duck lady and all was good according to our friend. There's even video footage. We returned late afternoon and found a MUD PIT. The words cannot even describe it... there's an area of 2-3m2 dug up, soaking wet, muddy with mud on the walls of the house, the door and the windows. Chickens probably didn't have anything to do with it... the ducks... the ducks are trouble! :/

 

[Bens-Hens]

Dang ducks! I thought about a couple of Peking's, but I keep hearing stories like this.....and the poo, I am told so much poo!

Can you lay a wire mesh panel down to stop digging? I have some thick wire panel sections that I lay over any holes to let them recover. Otherwise, once they have an opening they go nut's for it, even if there is a perfectly good sandy patch in the run area!

 

[QuackyMomma]

I moved their enclosure away from the trashed area... I hope they don't trash another part of the backyard or I swear to god we're gonna have crispy duck for dinner pronto. I had to hose and scrub down the house. For lack of a better description they must have gone nuts today and humped and dug and splashed and shat all day long.