Dustbath delights

I’ve discovered many joyful things about chicken-keeping in the six weeks that I’ve had my girls. But one thing I wasn’t quite prepared for was the delights of the dustbath. This ritual is a hen’s way of cleaning her feathers and getting rid of any little beasties that have crawled in there. It sounds boring, but it is a beautiful thing to watch and listen to.

Whenever the hen garden goes quiet and I can’t hear my chickens, I guess they’ve popped round the side of their coop for a dustbath. It’s the jacuzzi of the chicken world, and (if they’re friends with each other) very much a communal activity. They carve out a deep bowl in the ground by pecking and scratching, flop into it, and wriggle around.

The wriggling is the most beautiful thing. It’s the huffle-huffle-thud sound when all else is quiet. Huffle-huffle-thud, peck-peck-peck. The pecking is to pull more loose soil into the bath.

Florence and Lady Penelope bathe together, thudding over one another and snuggling up so close. Victoria tries to get in on the act, but is chased away, and has a deputy dustbath nearby that she uses when the main one is occupied. I add a scoop of diatomaceous earth to the dust every so often, as DE kills off red spider mite and lice and other beasties. If the bird eats it, it’s also a good way of keeping worms at bay, although not a proper poultry wormer.

But there’s something important that I’ve learned from the dustbath. Chickens are outdoor animals and need space. They need more space than most commercial runs give them. They like to explore and scratch and dig. My girls have their own garden, fenced off from the rest of the plot and therefore theirs to trash as they please. Their garden is bigger than they technically need, but it clearly keeps them happy as whenever I come home at the end of the day, they start leaping about in their runs with excitement at being let out. I will post on techniques to stop birds getting bored in their runs, but any would-be chicken keeper does need to think about devoting a little more of their garden to their birds than just the space the small run takes up (unless you have one of those snazzy big custom-made walk-in runs). And anyone who doesn’t own chickens might want to think again before buying eggs from caged hens, if you still do. These birds are made for the huffle-huffle-thud in the dust, and chasing flies and pecking at grass, not a tiny cage in a hot barn.