How to Keep Chickens From Dust Bathing in Your Flower Bed
I had trouble deciding what to call this post. It was either “How to Keep Chickens From Dust Bathing in Your Flower Bed” or “What I Did for Lunch“. One thing I’d like to post about is my schedule. Being lucky enough to work for a great company, I am telecommuting from Hillsville, VA (EST) to Boulder, CO (MST) – a two hour difference. My work hours will be the same as those in the office: 8am to 5pm MST with an hour lunch somewhere in the middle. It works out perfectly because I wake up at 6am EST but work (for pay) from 10am EST to 7pm EST. That gives me 4 hours in the morning to do my chores, eat, shower and enjoy a cup of coffee on the porch before getting down to office work. Then at 7pm I can stop work, put up the chickens, eat dinner with my wife and maybe enjoy an hour of reading or TV before going to bed. PERFECT! But…
Things will happen, as they do, to try and derail my schedule. I have some flexibility, which will help, but a lot of things I can take care of over lunch. For instance, keeping the chickens from taking dust baths in my herb/flower bed and typing up this post (between bites of a ham and cheese and kale sandwich).
The lovely woman who took care of this place for us over the fall and winter left behind a set of silverware that is much nicer than the one we brought. After shooing dirt-covered chickens out of the decimated herb/flower bed beside the house for the fifth time, I decided to “incentivize” their move to a new location.
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Category: Animals, DIY Projects, Funny, The Transplants
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Nice Everett, we may have to do this around our garden this season! Hope you guys are enjoying VA and the farm!
LOL, let me know if this works!
Had a similar problem with our house cat who liked to wallow in the bed where we were attempting to grow some herbs and catnip of all things. I took some wire mesh (chicken wire type stuff I had on hand) and made a dome to put over the sprouting plants. The plants got sunlight and protection. This worked until the plants were established enough to fend for themselves or at least cover the dust.
Might work for chickens and not raid the cutlery. At least now you have funny stories for guests, “you’ll never guess where that fork was…”
Bwah! That is too funny!
They’re gonna dust bathe no matter what. You might scratch up some ground for them somewhere else — if it looks nicer than your flower bed, they’ll probably move on to a new spot. Dust bathing spots should be in full sun with dry, loose soil.
Derec, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Jason, I will give that one a try if this doesn’t work. I’m all for the simplest approach to any problem, and this seemed the simplest thing to do at the time.
Anna, I know they’ll need to dust bath but am just hoping they’ll find another place to do it. There is a hole in front of the coop and I scratched up some fresh dirt for them and even mixed in some Dimatacious earth powder to help them kill off any parasites. I haven’t seen them use it yet though.
this has nothing to do about chickens but is the only place i could ffind to post. so i am just learning how to garden and this year i am growing tomatos and cucumbers which ar doing great. i also grew my flowers by seed and they are big and pretty. but next year i want to grow corn and i live in the city so the only place we can grow it it beside the house would that work?