Fresh hay for the chickens

The greenhouse smells summery and green from the new hay bales we just brought in, and the chickens love them some novelty. They're getting a little bored of their winter confinement to the polytunnel (I just call it a greenhouse). I try to give them plenty of entertainment (perches and dust baths help), but they always have an appetite for novelty, and hay bales are just the ticket.

Fresh hay bales are both feast and furniture. They pluck from them, eating the seeds and straws, they play king of the mountain, perch and sleep on them, and when some gets loose, they really have a big scratch.

This is the guinea hay stack

Guineas especially need grass in their diet, I've discovered, and they will eat and eat and eat hay.

This is the chicken stack!

On the floor, we've put mountains of wood shavings. Lots of carbon to balance the nitrogen of chicken poop. But in their coops I use hay.

They poop, I sprinkle fresh hay over their night soil until it stacks up, and when the coop floor gets thick, I clean out that fertilizer lasagna and fill feed sacks with the composting combo. The full feed sacks go to the garden to be used as mulch plus. Their "day soil" stays and boosts the greenhouse fertility for the summer crop in there.

I cannot believe how much hay I have used this year. I was given a ton of "old hay", but then thinking I had this crazy surplus I must have used an obscene amount mulching the garden. And I have more birds this winter, so they're going through more of it.

The tables are turning...

Now the chickens have claimed Mount Guinea, and vice versa. We have to try your hay

They are very entertained.