My chickens will have to be in their coop/run most of the time, as we are in an area with lots of predators and we don't have a fenced yard. I want my chickens to be able to move around/have stuff to do, but I'm not sure what I could use. I'm planning on putting in sand for dustbathing, and a little swing for them. I wasn't sure if an old cat toy (ball with a bell in it) would work at all? I was also planning on the occasional 'piñata' of food on a string for some fun but didn't want to make those regular. Any ideas on what to do?
I was all interested in providing my chickens something interesting to play around with in their chicken run.
My Failures: I tried some of the toys you talked about. I put a mirror in their run and they could care less. I considered building a swing for them and sent a note to a guy on YouTube that showed his chicken swings in his run. I asked him why he had no videos of the chickens using the swings. He responded that none of chickens ever used the swings he built and he was going to just take them down because they only got in his way. I bought some cat toys with bells in them and the chickens wanted nothing to do with them.
My Successes: I put some large rounds of tree trunks in with the chickens and they would jump up on them and look around. I put a yard garden cart in the run and filled it with grass clippings and daily kitchen scraps, and they liked to jump into the cart to eat the treats or sneak under the cart to rest in the shade.
That inspired me to make a pallet compost bin in the run. 3 sides of the compost bin are full pallets, but in the front the pallet was cut in half. I took the cut off half and used that as a half roof on the backside of the compost bin. So my chickens will jump up to the front half section, or even to the top of the compost bin on that half pallet, as well as perching on the top sides of the compost bin. Lots of places to climb on and there have been times when all my 10 chickens are on the compost bin in different positions.
At first I used a small cement mixing tub filled with sand to provide them with a place to take a dust bath. But chickens will be chickens and they preferred to dig into the dirt or leaves I dumped into the chicken run. That was OK because once the chicken ate all the grass in the chicken run and dug up everything until there was only dirt, I switched over to making a deep litter chicken run. I dumped in wood chips, grass clippings, and leaves and currently have about 16 inches of deep litter. Now they are really happy digging deep holes in the chicken run litter. Sometimes they dig down just far enough for a dust bath, but at other times they will scratch and peck down through all that litter eating bugs in the litter all the way down to the ground level.
In my limited experience, my chickens only really liked things that brought out their natural chicken behaviors. The deep litter in the chicken run provides them all the distractions they need all day long - scratching and pecking non stop. The compost bin provides a place for them to jump up on different levels to look around and/or sun themselves, and also provides them a shady place under the half roof if the daytime sun is too hot. Mostly, anything they can eat will be a great distraction for them. I am really liking the deep litter in the chicken run and, at this point, have given up on other ideas of toys as distractions.
