Chicken run update - dust bath area

This morning we saw Buffy having a dust bath with Spot and Goldilocks. Boy were they loving it!

Buffy was even falling asleep. It must be therapeutic for them, like a spa day, and it's always more fun when others join in. I've read that chickens have dust baths to keep the population of lice and mites down. Being winter, a dry area anywhere is a bit hard to find, but I tried to provide one for Buffy's run.

Just another day at the Dust Spa

It's not much really, just a box of soil under a plastic sheet. One side of the sheet is screwed to the side of Buffy's coop (which helps in the case of sideways rain seeping through the coop) and the other side is just wrapped around a piece of wood and held down with cinder blocks.

It was meant as a temporary winter area, but it made me think that Penguin's run doesn't have any dry areas outside. I've also noticed that everytime that we let Penguin's group out to free range, they head straight to their favourite dust bathing spot and jump right in.

"Hey, wanna jump in the bath with me?

So here starts Penguin's temporary dust bath area. With a kiddy pool :)

Penguin's lean to, Day Spa

Again it involves whatever we have lying around, in this case, a metal door frame, a wooden lattice frame, some old fence panels and the plastic sheet. I've found that my chickens are rather reluctant to venture into dark areas, so the plastic lets in light, whilst keeping the rain off.

It's all temporary, and I'll see if they like it enough before I think about something permanent.

And here it is completed, the sheeting screwed down a bit and some soil put in.

Sandpit for the chickens

 I also tidied up Buffy's dust bathe area a bit.

 The Leghorns have already been through the pit digging, but not dust bathing.

What do you think? Not bad for a day's work. Let's just see how wind proof it is now!

It's really cold tonight. Had to cuddle Penguin quite a bit!