Elderly cat breathing difficulties when purring

[beach chick]

have had my chooks for 6 weeks. they have TRASHED the grass within the 25m of omlet fencing, despite me moving the boundaries every couple of weeks or so by jiggling it around so they get fresh grass and some areas get time to recover.

 

so some questions:

do you ever move the whole thing to a completely different area of the garden, and if so how long does it take for the 'old' area to recover?

 

if you dont move it completely, does the ground that is always in the run (iyswim) get 'sick' or harbour parasites?

 

where mine are now is pretty perfect in lots of respects (shade, sun, grass, bare earth, visible but not dominant, etc etc) so I would like to keep them up there really if possible

[Egluntyne]

I don't move my girls fences anymore.

 

I do dig it over (they go mad for the worms!) and sprinkle garden lime about every 6 weeks.

 

(Re parasites: I worm them 3 times a year).

[beach chick]

egluntine, do you fork it over properly, or just here and there? hadnt thought of lime, and guess I should worm them.

mine seem to really love their fresh grass... but cant see any point seeding as obviously they'd just eat it!!

[Egluntyne]

egluntine, do you fork it over properly, or just here and there? hadnt thought of lime, and guess I should worm them.

mine seem to really love their fresh grass... but cant see any point seeding as obviously they'd just eat it!!

 

I have got a mini rotovator (SP?) called a Mantis Tiller and I use that. I haven't got the back for much heavy digging.

 

If you dug it roughly it would be enough, and they would get to the worms!

 

PS the garden lime kills the sour smell of the soil too, and doesn't harm the hens.

[CockADoodleDoo]

you could try bying turf instead of seed

[chelsea]

we re-turfed a couple of months ago. We partitioned off the turfed area until the grass "took" and now the girls free range on it and it hasnt been damaged at all.

 

My chickens are very well behaved - none of my plants/grass/pots are touched at all

[Gallina]

I think Beach Chick is talking about the grass within the Omlet net fencing, not in the Eglu run itself.

 

My hens only get out for an hour or two a day on my grass in their net pen, and the grass has never looked so good before: the droppings disappear instantly on my sandy soil and nourish the grass. But obviously if the hens are out in the net pen all day they will do damage. I would have thought with all the rain we are having the grass would recover very quickly: it is very resilient.

 

But it depends on the grass. I have a hard-wearing mix with rye seed. If you have a real lawn (fescue and bent etc) then I don't think you can let hens on it at all.

 

(I had to look up the abbreviation "IYSWIM". In case anyone doesn't know, it means "If You See What I Mean".)

[chocchick]

We have a desolate mud bath most of the time. They freerange all day on one of our lawns. We tried growing back hard-wearing grass and it worked!

http://club.omlet.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11270

We sectioned off an area of the run and banned all chickens. Spring/Autumn is the best time to grow it apparently.

It takes 6 months to get rid of worms (I think ) If you wanted to put treatments down, Virkon S would deal with any surface bacteria and viruses