Our chickens are kept penned in their coop for most of the day, but we try to let them out for a few hours every afternoon so that they can roam around and have some fun. I don't give them more time out than this, though, because they do more with those big feet and sharp claws than just scatter about the compost heap.
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Chickens love dust baths. They dig holes in any soft patch of soil and then wiggle and wallow down into it until every feather is coated with dirt. Any place where I garden has soft soil, so you can guess where they dig the most. We have lots of ugly little fences as protection around a lot of my garden areas, but simply can't put them around everything.
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| Happy hen |
One place where the hens can get to is the bulb bed in the center of our circular drive. All of those roundish objects in the picture aren't eggs - they're daffodil and tulip bulbs.
The good news is that the chickens don't actually harm the bulbs much since they are dormant. I'll simply gather them up when I have time and plant them again later this fall.
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What they do to the onion bed is a little more destructive. When they're done digging in there, the air is pungent with the odor of bruised onions.
Sometimes I drive them out by chasing them or squirting them with the hose, but they always come back. The truth is that, they are so ridiculously happy in their dirt playpen that I don't worry too much about what they do.
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Besides, they more than make up for everything by what they give us in return!
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