I have two dog pens with a chicken house in between. I live in northwest Arkansas and we have had so much rain that my runs are so wet and I have been worried sick. Today I bought two bales of hay and now the chickens have dry ground to walk on. How do you deal with wet runs for your chickens?
I put that out sometimes too. although I don't like it much because when it gets wet it's heavy and not much better than mud in my opinion..... What we will be doing and there are many threads on here about it..... SAND. It needs to be a few inches deep. we haven't had a way to transport yet so we bring home a few bags at a time. We just put it in a small area for them and they love to eat it and 'bathe' in it and scratch in it. As soon as we put our dump trailer on the road we will be getting some sand. It's cheaper by the 'ton' or whatever load size you need than by the bag, at least for a larger area it is. Which looks like yours is. Hope that helps and your birds look greaT!
I live on Vancouver Island in Bc. It rains here all winter. What we have done in past few years is get wood chips from company's that cut trees down and chip up the branches. They deliver it here for free. I tell them that we don't want any that has cedar in it. It works really well keeps the chickens from getting all muddy. We also have an area outside that gives them shelter from the rain. For some reason they never go inside there coop to stay dry. They like being outside.
Now that the rains have started to come I have been raking up all the dry hay-straw stuff that grows in place of a typical grass out here and keep a few buckets of it in the shed. After the rain I throw it into one corner of the run and watch them spread it out as well as rest in there. Good amount of bugs stay in there or migrate to there while in the buckets. I like throwing some scratch down first. Gives them a nice suprise once they get to the bottom. Then they start goin a bit crazy.
