Thursday, April 14, 2011

What the hay!

Well, we've run out of hay.  
Last winter we deep littered the chickens.
Instead of a weekly muck out of the coop, we first put down a deep layer of leaves and grass clippings from the fall cleanup and then put hay in the chickens' laying boxes.
Every week, I'd take an old feed sack full of 2 flakes of hay down to the coop and put it on top with a hand full of corn on top of that.  This way the chickens would stir up the layers and the coop would stay sweet smelling.  I would also dump out all the hay from the laying boxes onto the floor and put fresh hay in.  This way I had pretty clean eggs.
After mucking out the coop a few weeks ago, I realized we had gone through the hay we had bought and put in the  garage for the deep littering.  
The laying boxes were getting a little muddy from the chickens' feet and thus, the 10 eggs I collected yesterday were in desperate need for a good washing.
What's a girl to do when she is all out of hay and the boxes are getting muddy...and she's out of wood shavings, hay and other good items for the job?
She gets thinking.
My husband taught me how to get our lawnmower going a few weekends ago.  All the clippings from the mowing job went into the compost heap...and hay is just dry really tall grass (well kind of)...so I bet you can figure out what I did. 
The chickens had to go immediately into the boxes and check out what the new item was...I am always amazed by how curious creatures they are.
Was I rewarded with nice, fresh, non muddy eggs...
Not so much...
maybe I should teach them to wipe their feet off before coming in the (chicken) house.

5 comments:

  1. If you figure out a way to teach the chickens to clean their feet do let me know since mine can't seem to learn!
    Have you seen the Mary Jane Farms Magazine with a pattern for making 'chicken nappies'? I just don't think I can have a chicken running around the house, nappy or not!

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  2. Tracey! Chicken is the house....i agree..that is foul (haha). And my dear sister...i cant even believe that you are mowing the LAWN. Oh the envy. We are expecting 60s today though for the first time and I bet it will melt off those last patches of snow.

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  3. No chickens allowed in our house...just their coop...I think the very idea makes me want to bathe...I couldn't imagine making chicken diapers!

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  4. Chicken diapers?? Gross! I can't wait until I no longer have children in diapers!
    We use grass clippings in the chicken yard too. Our lawn isn't really very large and we mulch the clippings back in, but our neighbor has a very large lawn. We invite him to just dump the clippings over the fence into the chicken's half of the yard. They love to scratch through the pile and spread it out themselves. Once it's all dry and picked through thoroughly, we rake it up and toss it in the compost. Except over the winter, when we left it to avoid haveing a huge mudhole. ;)

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  5. That's a great idea for yard scrap...pre composting it sounds swell...I know the feeling of wanting kids out of diapers...C. is finishing up potty training, but still needs to master overnight and naptime...just a few short months and we're done with diapers...and you will just be starting with another Anisa!

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Thanks for visiting with us girls...put your feet up and stay for a while.