Okay, I admit it, I’m just feeling too ill, crappy and lazy to do any real gardening today. So I settled for some poultry therapy instead. I was reminded of a post that I read on Mark’s Vegetable Garden this morning, about his ‘little helpers’ in the compost bin. Well, my not-so-little helpers at the moment are my chickens.

I like to clean out their coop and use all the manure in the compost heap, along with a small amount of the sawdust. I read up on this a fair bit before we had the chickens, and it seems as though opinions are divided over whether or not chicken manure is suitable for the compost heap. As far as I can see, it’s manure, and it will be well rotted. They sell pelleted chicken manure for fertiliser, so a small amount of it couldn’t hurt, right? If anyone wants to give me a valid warning before I add too much into my compost heap, do feel free!

Anyhow, after that lovely image has burned itself into your memory for the rest of your night, I’ll get on to the main point. As I said, I was going to be writing a post about the compost, but then I went in to take some photos of the chickens, and caught them sneaking a peak at their newly-cleaned coop.

That’s how things started, a veritable palace for poultry! But then, I opened the door to the coop and the little blighters were in there, scratching away like no tomorrow! I can’t tell if they were on the hunt for the flies that had been pestering them that day or if they were just ‘rearranging the furniture’, but I was most unimpressed at the speed with which they dessimated my handiwork!

I ended up taking a video of it, and it turned into quite the little project for the two of us today. So here they are, in full-motion glory. I apologise (profusely) for the state of my voice in the video. It took me three tries and I always end up sounding miserable!

Anyhow, until the next post!

Advertisement