The Natural Chicken Keeping thread - OTs welcome!

[Phoenixxx]

count me as another fan of Molly's herbals.  

My flock is in a good sized run, but they tend to stay under the coop and under the pines - and that is where the droppings build up.  So, yup, worms.   This spring I have grandiose plans of digging out under the coop (its an old construction trailer) and hauling that dirt to the garden and replacing it with garden dirt.  

Having the chickens in the run for 8 or 9 years means there is a pretty good build up of cysts.   I've had to keep them more confined the last year because a neighbor dog from down the road was picking them off.   I doubled the run - its about 1,500 feet , but still, the flock has its favorite places to be.

I could move the coop and run, but I'm happy where it is, and it would be quite the underaking to move the coop, run fence, etc.

I do think health helps a chicken handle the normal worm load, but even a very healthy chicken can get overrun - stress, age, change, etc.

I wonder if there's a way to treat the affected ground to kill off the eggs without harming the chickens/other life? Now THAT would be great! My main run is muddy muck for about half the year. At least twice a year I scrape off the top poo layer to bring it back down to fresh earth and that seems to help. I do the same to the coop floor (it's dirt) but much more frequently.

 

[shortgrass]

I wonder if there's a way to treat the affected ground to kill off the eggs without harming the chickens/other life? Now THAT would be great! My main run is muddy muck for about half the year. At least twice a year I scrape off the top poo layer to bring it back down to fresh earth and that seems to help. I do the same to the coop floor (it's dirt) but much more frequently.

Look into beneficial nematodes or microbes. Certain nematodes will feed off of eggs and larvae, and microbes can improve the soil as well as keep pests in check.

Here's where I go to get them
http://www.arbico-organics.com/category/s?keyword=Beneficial+nematodes

There's a bunch of different options there, so choose the bundle that works for you

 

[Leahs Mom]

I think that @lalaland s birds going under the house makes it really hard to keep the ground healthy in the run. It's hard to get under there!

In my hen shed, we blocked the birds from going under the shed, and only have to deal with a run area. I put some photos at the bottom showing the frames with hardware cloth that we put around the base of the hen shed so they can't get under there.


I'm going to re-post something I've posted before on keeping ground in runs healthy. I'm just going to copy something I've written before. Hope it's helpful..

****************************

One thing that I really encourage to help with the health of the flock is to practice a deep litter in any outdoor pens. You can get usually get free wood chips from tree services in your area, and put all litter from the inside coop out onto the deep litter in the pens.

Keeps the ground healthy and full of good bugs and bacteria. The birds love to dig through it and it stops that unhealthy, impacted, "slimy-in-the-rain" disease breeding ground.

I know that I say that a lot, but it is one thing that I think could help with the health of all birds if they can't freely range... Here's a quote from a former post:

Quote:



Quote: From 2014


See the frames with the hardware cloth behind the hen & chicks....we put those all around the base to keep them from going under and also to keep predators from getting in from under. Also notice the deep liter wood chips in the run.








Another view of deep litter int he run. Full of worms just underneith if you dig up a scoop w/your shovel. The birds love it!

 

[Phoenixxx]

Great idea! I split my coop clean-up between the compost pit and the run. Any material that is still half-decent I toss in the run and the heavy, clumpy stuff goes in the pit behind the run. In the summers all my lawn trimmings and leaf rakings go in the run, as well. It's not enough to get happening what you've got going on but it does help.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

When we clean our pens we dump the spent shavings in the field. The chickens spend lots of time digging through it like they never seen it before, then the donkeys come over and start eating old shavings covered in chicken poop.

We do deep litter in our bantam run and some shaving go out there but not all. Some get composed with the turkey poop, which the bantam dig through for bugs.

 

[lazy gardener]

I agree, the one, best thing you can do to keep your flock healthy is to keep them OFF a barren moonscape chicken run. And the way to do that is to cover that run with a deep litter. LM, you have convinced me that I also need to make the underside of my coop inaccessible to the chickens, no matter how much they enjoy scrounging around under there. That will be my summer goal: panels to keep them out from under the coop. I do like the panel idea, so that if I do need to access the underside of the coop, it can be easily accomplished. I have a beautiful windrow of composted chicken litter. It was taken out of the coop, tossed into the run, then raked up when I re-designed my run. Will go in the garden this year. Am now building up a DL in 500 s.f. run with leaves, garden waste, bedding from the coop, grass clippings, and wood chips. I'm also now sold on NOT using shavings as litter in the coop. Tried DL in the coop with shavings last winter. Was a frozen mess, and there was an ammonia issue. This year, I had access to more leaves. Problem solved. Those leaves will go into the run in the spring (about 1/2 of them) and get replaced by more wood chips, leaves, grass clippings. Hoping to never have to buy shavings again.

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

All my leaves go into the run and on my garden. I do mix hay with my shavings to keep a more dense floor covering. I can't do deep litter in my chicken pens due to concrete floors, they help keep the rats down.

 

[Leahs Mom]

LM, you have convinced me that I also need to make the underside of my coop inaccessible to the chickens, no matter how much they enjoy scrounging around under there. That will be my summer goal: panels to keep them out from under the coop. I do like the panel idea, so that if I do need to access the underside of the coop, it can be easily accomplished.

When my husband made the panels that was exactly the idea - so they could be easily unscrewed if we needed to get under.

I just laid a length of hardware cloth on the ground around the perimeter to help stop and predator digging, then set the panels on top of those and they were screwed to the base of the house.

ONE OF THE PANELS HAS HINGES.

I originally had some wiring under there that I needed to have access to every now and then and the hinges were so that I could just open it up like a door.

We're having a blowing snow storm or I'd go out and take a photo of that hinged panel. It's just the panel to the left of the people door on the front. If you look closely in this photo, you can see a black hinge just to the left of the open door. That panel, consisting of 2 frames, is the one that will hinge up to open.

Be sure to divide them into panels...they can be several panels long, but if you make divisions it makes it harder fo a predator to break through it. (Same with all of your builds. I leave these people doors open all summer and the interior has hardware cloth panels divided into smaller divisions with cross-pieces to make it stronger - so there isn't a huge width that can be broken/bent with the weight of the predator. see second photo)

 

[lazy gardener]

awesome build, BTW, and nice colors.

 

[Phoenixxx]

Look into beneficial nematodes or microbes. Certain nematodes will feed off of eggs and larvae, and microbes can improve the soil as well as keep pests in check.

Here's where I go to get them
http://www.arbico-organics.com/category/s?keyword=Beneficial+nematodes

There's a bunch of different options there, so choose the bundle that works for you

I emailed the company asking which preparation to use for parasitic worms/eggs in the soil since I didn't see any chicken/dog worm names on their pest list. I got a reply a couple hours ago stating that they have no such product but have heard that some people use DE and they could sell me that instead. I'm a bit disappointed. On the upside, they do have lots of other good stuff that could come in handy if I ever learn to grow plants