High Five Friday #2

Want to know how I turned diabetes trash into chicken playground treasure? Keep reading to find out!

Hello and happy Friday!

If you own chickens then you understand what this time of year is… chick season. You can’t walk into a hardware store without hearing those sweet little chirps 🐣🐣

So naturally what do you do? Buy some and take them home.

“Just one”, turns into two. Then three and before you know it, you’re taking home four baby chicks to add to your flock.

This, my friend, is chicken math and I fall prey to it every season.

We did a lot of things differently this year with our brooder (aka the baby chicken home).

In years past we put them in a large dog crate, but not only did EVERYTHING get covered in dust (because after the first week we used pine shavings for footing) but it was also tedious to get in there and clean.

This year, no pine shavings. The Feather Brain blog does a great job at explaining why pine shavings might not be the best idea.

And I can attest to the RIDICULOUS….and I mean RIDICULOUS amount of dust that is generated from pine shavings.

It’s a lot. And it’s gross. I sneeze. The ladies sneeze. Did I mention it’s gross?

She talks about why sand is better option, but not just any sand. Read more about it here.

So this year we went with a storage bin.

And once they started to jump and fly (around 3-4 weeks old) we put a grated cover on top.

Diabetes trash turned into chicken-playground treasure 💁‍♀️

This has been SO much easier to clean than the dog crate, and since we’re not using pine shavings we have ZERO dust.

We just replace the paper towels every 2 days or so, which gives us a chance to cuddle & hold them – which has made them super friendly and not as skittish around us.

Let me know in the comments below!