Cleaning Day for the Hens!

-

Just cleaned the chicken run, dust bath, hen condo, chicken house, hen house, etc!

I also got some a couple of bags of sand and some diatomaceous earth and got rid of the old dust bath mix, and put in a brand new dust bath mix. Just all purpose sand mixed with diatomaceous earth, which helps prevent mites and lice and other infestations. 

After raking out the run area, I spread diatomaceous earth around and mixed it in with the sand. This too helps prevent infestations. They like to go in the dust bath rack to dust bath, and sometimes they prefer to dust bath in the sand in the run, too. So I went heavy with the diatomaceous earth in the areas that they tend to enjoy dust bathing in. I coated some frequently used surfaces with pure white food grade diatomaceous earth. That will kill mites and lice on those surfaces and when the hens step on these surfaces, including roosting bars, so they’ll end up with some of it on their feet as well. I also have a mite and lice spray for chickens that I sprayed into the hen condo, chicken house and hen house. 

You can also use it directly on the chickens, which I didn’t need to do. It’s all about prevention to avoid infestations in the first place. 

And I almost always put a little apple cider vinegar in their water. That will offer protection from the inside out. And I even like to put some food grade diatomaceous earth in to their feed. This stuff is great for regulating their GI tract as well. 

I also gave them some lettuce today as a treat, which they loved! They had fun with it too! Plus some dried meal worms, scratch and Hentastic oregano treats! I like to spoil them now and then! LOL! 

Just a few photos after cleaning! As you can see in one of the photos, the white PVC sheet used for the floor in the hen house looks sooooo clean!!! I pushed aside some of the shavings to get a photo.

 Chicken House

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Too Much Rain!

-
Image
We are getting way too much rain! Plus we had a snow melt with all of this rain! The yard is a mess! When walking down to the chicken coop, the lawn is so soft and squishy! I had to wear boots because my feet would have gotten drenched with regular footwear just walking across the lawn! No drought here!  Areas out front:  Our walkway from driveway to front of house! Crazy!   Areas out back:  I am glad the chicken run is relatively dry!  The first year with my chickens, they were all sinking in mud here! I had to add many bags of fine gravel, followed by many bags of sand to raise the ground level a few inches inside the run! It still wasn’t quite enough so I had to add many more bags of sand a couple more times until I could get the ground was raised enough to stay puddle-free! All in all, I raised the ground here about 7 inches from what it was! It was a lot of work! I can’t recall exactly how many bags of gravel plus sand were used. I’m guessing I used about 30, 50-pound bags of grav
Read more

Deck Work

-
Image
We are in the process of replacing the deck boards and railings, as well as adding additional supports in various spots to enhance the strength of the deck over time. It was tough removing the old deck boards and getting the new ones into position. The new boards are pressure-treated and are 20 feet in length, so each board was very heavy and difficult to maneuver. Once we had the boards in place it took about 800 deck screws to secure them! That’s a lot of screwing, LOL! We still have the last two end boards to install, as well as the new railings, and then we need to work on the stairs. We are going with premade railings which will be easier to install after trimming them to fit properly. Since the trailer is tied up with the scrap boards and railings, we have to run to the dump when they’re open I was hoping to finish before the end of vacation but we decided to take a break and head up to New Hampshire to visit our son and his family!  Here is the progress so far!  We had the 20-fo
Read more

Christmas Decorating in Progress!

-
Image
This year I decided to make some changes with some of my Christmas decorations! The old outdoor strings of lights needed to be replaced. One string no longer worked last year and I figured the others might not might not make it through another season. I have always enjoyed the multicolor lights but I know my husband loves blue lights so I decided to go with blue. They are very pretty but, to me, not as “Christmasy” as the multicolored lights. I could go to the store to get multicolored lights to replace them but it is just too much work at this point! We will remain decorated in blue for this Christmas anyway! LOL!!  But the highlight of my Christmas decorating this year is my new, pre-lit, artificial Christmas Tree! I had been using a pre-lit, artificial Christmas tree that I have had for at least ten years, possibly closer to 15 years! But it was only seven feet tall and looked really tiny in my post and beam living room with super high ceilings!  My new tree is twelve feet tall! And
Read more