[MartF]

My five fat hens have scratched their lovely grassy area virtually to down the ground, as they do! Today while gardening I noticed we had a lot of leaves falling from the trees surrounding the front garden, due to lack of rain in Lincolnshire, not the early Autumn onset!

We gathered several sacks of them and spread them in the run and threw in some pellets, they absolutely love it, they are scratching away in it picking up the pellets and no doubt other tit bits! As a bonus the run looks a whole lot better for it and seems to eradicate any smells coming from it.

Anyone else use leaf litter or is it not advised?

Here's a quick video of them...

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[snow white]

What a smashing idea,  they look very happy about it!

[SCassin]

Sounds a fab idea might be off down the park to gather some leaves for my girls - especially if it absorbs smell and therefore will be ok in the compost bin that closer to the house after lol

[splash101]

eucalyptus leaves  unfortunately by the time i've raked them up, the little helpers are one step ahead and already scratching about and re-distributing.

[joolz68]

Our coop&run is under a sycamore tree so i cant wait to see ours forage threw it all when the leaves drop now ive seen how much fun your hens are having 

[MartF]

They really love it, we keep adding more leaves for them. Can't wait for the Autumn.

Only thing is they are not so attractive when they get wet through so only today we put up a 3 mtr square gazebo in the run to keep their scratching area nice and dry!

Spoilt hens or what!

[barley]

snap - do exactly the same and if you rake it out to replace with fresh leaves it makes a smashing mulch for the veg plot 

[Debbieta]

Hi,
Last year I spent many an hour raking up leaves and popping them into the hen run.  Luckily we have many trees around us so had free supplies up til Christmas gone.  The chickens loved scratching any free morsel they could find.
Enjoy,
Debbieta

[MartF]

We seem to have no problem keeping up with the leaves as we are surrounded by trees and because of lack of rain in Lincolnshire through the summer some are dropping early now. I expect before much longer the pen will be knee deep in leaf litter!

We've realised that not only do the hens enjoy scratching through it but it's better for them psychologically speaking too. Before the leaves if we through a handful of pellets or corn in they would have a bit of a casual peck at it but thats about all and a lot of it would get left.

However, now when you do the same thing they scratch around for hours until they have cleared up every last bit! It seems they are much more interested in each grain if they have had to scratch to find it - a sort of self reward system.

We scatter some in several times a day now and that keeps them working and scratching about all day - happy hens - they love it!

[Debbieta]

Don't forget to rake the leaves back up into a huge pile when needed, it's so entertaining watching them kicking them over each other in their enthusiasm to be the first one to get back to the bottom!
Regards,
Debbie