More Room For The Chickens

Don has made the chicken pen larger again. He started planning to do this a while back and had stopped mowing the lawn in the area he was going to expand. The grass is nice and long and the chickens are having a grand time in there.

It was kind of funny, when we first opened up the area, the chickens came over and stood at the border of the old area. They kept looking at the new area but nobody was inclined to wander in. Chickens aren't generally the 'leap before you look' type. They like to look and discuss and think about it and discuss it a little more and then, hey, let's think about it some more. Mandelas was the first adventurer in and she just loved it. By the end of the day, most of the chickens had decided that it was worth checking out. They seem to like the old tree at the end of the pen.

The new area easily doubles the area the chickens have. The more space they have, the happier they'll be. They very rarely wander alone, most have a couple they like to pal around with.

Fifty Seven Pounds

I finally got around to harvesting my worm castings. I emptied both bins and combined them into the bigger bin with fresh bedding which was dead leaves that had been soaked in water then drained. I have an awful amount of worms and when they are all in the bottom rolled up in a ball as I removed the castings, it's pretty gross. Especially when I have to pick 'em up. Ew. I think I will go back to my original way of harvesting which was to gently dump the whole bin on a plastic sheet outside in the sun. When I got down to just the worms, I just slid them off the plastic into the nice cleaned bin. No touching involved. Pretty sweet. While a huge ball of worms is icky, the castings are pretty amazing. It really does look like earth, rich and dark with a, well, earthy sweet smell. It really shows that every creature, no matter how 'primitive' or insignificant, does have an important part to play in nature. Worms keep the ground healthy and plants flourish because of it.

I filled up two feed bags about half way. I didn't want them too heavy. Just for fun, I weighed the bags. One was just over 25 pounds and the other topped 32 pounds. Fifty Seven pounds of worm castings. That's a lot, considering it is usually used in a 1 to 10 ratio. Like I have 570 pounds of earth/compost to mix the castings into. No worries, I will find a use for it all. If nothing more, I will use in the fall when I put the garden to bed.