The Chicken Run
Posted: Wed 1 April, 2009 Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Getting Organised, Green, Green Garden, Thoughts 2 Comments »It’s coming up for a year now since we enlarged the chicken run (well, we did it at the end of July, so it’s about 8 or 9 months) and I’m debating what to do with the thing.
The problem is, of course, that the three chickens have pretty much pecked the place to death, so there’s not much except dirt and nettles in there at the moment. There’s a couple of bits in there for the amusement of the chickens (hay bales etc.) but I’m still thinking about what we should do with the ground in there.
I suppose there’s three options really…
- Leave it as it is
- Put new turf in the entire area of the run
- Cover the run in bark-chip or similar (wood mulch, whatever)
With the exception of “leave it like it is”, both the other options would also involve setting up a smaller temporary run (possibly on the veg patch, let ’em peck away at the weeds and mare’s tail) for a couple of weeks, while we got the work done.
I know that Blue Witch recently re-turfed her chicken run but I haven’t yet decided between turf and bark-chip/wood mulch. I suspect that over time, the wood mulch would give them something they could keep on pecking into etc., but it’d still have to be replaced/cleared up every so often, due to the quantity of crap that chickens produce.
It’s something that’ll be decided sometime in April, I’m sure.
Ours is a large orchard area, enclosed by electric netting, hence why we turfed.
I’ve been reading about using wood chips in all sorts of places recently. I think it’s the latest thing in fact.
Yesterday I picked up some hatching eggs from a superbly kept chicken place (the best I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying something) and they were running on a wood chip system.
Given that one shouldn’t keep hens on the same patch of ground continually (parasite and worm build up, and over-acidification and contamination of the soil), I think your best bet would be wood chips. Hose them down and turn them over every few weeks, and replace annually, so the woman yesterday told me. She composts hers for a few motnhs and then uses them on the garden as mulch.
A local tree surgeon would probably be dlighted to offload his waste – probably for free, and if not, certianly not for very much.
We move our chickens to a fresh patch of grass every so often, but that’s a lot of work in moving the fencing and requires a lot of space. The ground left behind grows more nettles than grass for a long time, too. The wood chip idea sounds a very good one and they’d love pecking it over.