Our area has been on a burn ban for about five months because of drought conditions. One of the smaller consequences of this is that I have not been able to make ash for the chicken’s dust bath. They dug down the area inside their tire well below the base of the tire, bathing in the scratched up dirt and carrying it off in their feathers, but I didn’t have the means to refill.

My folks visited and the RV park where they stayed had metal fire pits. Fire pits with stacks of Post Oak wood piled up near by. Fire pits that hadn’t been cleaned out in a long time, so were full of hardwood ash. Jackpot. I hauled off a garbage bag full of ash to put in the hens’ dust bath.

I mixed the ash with diatomaceous earth (DE) and dirt inside the tire, and stirred it with a stick.

I wasn’t able to entirely fill the tire, but it is a sight better than the negative value of dust bathing material that was in there before. My chickens tend to eat chunks of charcoal when I give them new ash, turning their droppings black. I need to remember not to panic when I see that again. It has been awhile.

I purchased some wheat seeds for the two “salad bars” in the coop runs. The forage seed I was using had more dicotyledons (two leaf) sprouts than monocotyledons (one leaf) sprouts. The sprouts weren’t growing through the mesh, but bending down underneath. The wheat grass is working nicely as it can grow through the mesh and be neatly trimmed by the chickens, which they do enthusiastically.

Well sort of free. I removed the poultry wire from between three runs since I’m done trying to sprout seeds in them (except in the salad bars). It gives the hens more room to roam and some extra outdoor perches. The whole run is still covered in hardware cloth because they still need protection from the neighboring wildlife. (Although not spiders. I watched a hen take down a wolf spider this week. Spider didn’t have a chance.)

The outside run now looks like a chicken jungle gym. The hens had no problem with the removed wire and they wandered happily under the dividers. After a couple days, they started perching on the 2x4s, I did sand the splinters down to try to prevent bumblefoot. I left the doors intact, since it is helpful to have a closed off space when we are doing health checks, but right now the doors are all open.

Happy Fourth! Celebrating our freedom like the hens: walking under dividers. Or maybe enjoying our apparent freedom. There are probably many comparisons between the chicken life and life during pandemic, but I’ll let you draw your own.

I finally broke down and made some chicken salad bars. These are basically just hardware cloth in a wood frame designed to let the plants grow through the frame, but keep the chickens from scratching up the roots. I used scrap lumber: 2x4s for the base, and 1x2s for the top (to protect the chickens from sharp wire edges). I made a square and a rectangle because that maximized my wood scraps. The hardware cloth is 1/2” squares.

My hope is that the chickens will have a more steady access to fresh greens, rather than spending a week growing sprouts in a run, and the hens consume the lot in a day and a half.