During the extra hot heat wave I made my chicken some frozen treats by putting fruit and vegetable pieces in a bundt pan and freezing it. To give it to the chickens I turned the bundt pan over and ran hot water over the metal. The ice ring popped right out!
The bits of fruit left over from fruit salad went over the best. I made another ring with pumpkin, carrots and peas; the chickens ate around the peas. The ring made of banana and cranberry was a huge bust, they barely nibbled it.
My hens love their foot bath, so much so that in the hottest days sometimes there is only mud and sludge by the time I make it out to the coop. So I set up an automatic watering system in the chicken run to refill the hens’ foot bath, just because it is so hot and they use it so often. I thought I would run it just at night, just for a couple minutes, so it didn’t scare the chickens, but when I was testing the system, a hen walked in without a care for the running water. So I added a mid-day top up to the timer. The water runs, stirs up the sediment, and mostly rinses out with the overflow. We still have to go out once a day to make sure the yuck is all out, but at least I feel better that there is a full cooling system available to them.
We have a pan cam working in the coop again! So I could see a hen get off the roost at 4:30am and blindly make her way over the nest boxes, hop up, and settle in. She isn’t broody, as when the sun was up she was off the nest and out into the runs. I guess when she has to lay, she has to lay.
I reinforced the back screen door with hardware cloth so I could leave it open at night in the summer heat. It helps the cooler night air circulate. Now the camera should be able to see if there are predators peeking in too.
I have a melon baller, but I don’t usually use it because it leaves quite a bit of waste. The balls of melon are pretty in the fruit salad, but all the left over bits bothered me.
I was thinking of it wrong. It isn’t waste, it is more left for the chickens! With that in mind, I scooped out the cantaloupe and watermelon happily knowing the hens would clean out the rinds later.
I put out some canned pumpkin for the chickens to see if it helps with the digestive issues that start up when they start laying. (They’ve been laying again for awhile, but a couple still have dirty tail feathers.) They love fresh pumpkin, but when presented with canned, they all but accused me of attempted poison.
I’ve noticed in the fall, when they have a steady supply of raw pumpkin, there are more fluffy butts, and less need for me to rinse them clean. But fresh pumpkin is hard to obtain in the spring and summer. Butternut squash doesn’t seem to have the appeal, though it really seems like it should be a good substitute. After a few hours I went back to check on the status of the canned pumpkin, and they did brave the new preparation and devoured it all. They can’t lick the plate because they’re chickens, but they did a good job trying. See? I’m not trying to poison you!
Critters and Craft 