[dawninspain]

Hopefully next week we will have finished making a chicken house with attached run and can then go and get some chickens! Hurray, hurray

Their home will be in the fenced part of the garden where we grow our veg and the plan is that for a lot of the time they will be able to free range and otherwise they will have a run about 9' by 6'. We have made a concrete base for the run so that it is easy to clean.

My question is - do we need to put anything down on the concrete floor - like some sort of litter - or just scatter food to give them something to peck at when they are shut in.

I am sure that this will be the first of many, many questions.

Dawn

[purplebat]

can you give them an area of dirt, a tray or something? so they have something to bath in, and scratch

[richyrich7]

I chucked a bag of bark chippings in the other day with mine, they loved it spent many happy hours making a mess    

Inside I use straw and wood shavings which over the year they have broken down into a fine friable dust which they dig around in and bathe in when it's wet outside.

[Aunt Sally]

You do need to put something soft down over the concrete base I'm aftaid, or they will get sore feet.  Hens NEED to scratch.  Mine try to tunnel to Australia    

Richy has suggested bark chippings which are excellent the really need to be a 2-3 inches deep over the pen. I use play bark as it is quite large pieces and doesn't go mushy whan wet or pood on.  I occasionally remove the pooiest bark (chuck it on the compost heap) and add a bit of fresh stuff.

I have a dustbath for them in the run, a big deep tub from Wilco's very cheap.  I put about 3 inches of sandy soil in it which is liberally dosed with Diatom to combat lice and mites.


Hope that helps  

[dawninspain]

Thank you everyone for your advice. I'm glad I asked - hate the thought of sore feet.

We can get garden bark here although its not as common as in the UK so we'll put some of that down together with a couple of plastic trays with some dirt in for baths.  At the end of the run there will be a covered area (with the house above reached by a ladder) so we could also strew some straw there where it won't get wet.

I presume the bark can stay for quite a while before it needs changing.

Good idea Auntie to put the antilice/mite powder into the dust bath - do you find that this is sufficient and you don't need to actually put any on to the birds directly?

Thanks Dawn

[Aunt Sally]

I've never needed to dust the girls directly.  It's a good idea to dust inside their house in all the dark nooks and crannies too.

A regurlar (weekly) inspection of your birds for passengers is a good idea, and a quick wipe in suspicious places inside the coop with some white tissue or cloth to check for red mite is very sensible