{"id":969,"date":"2012-08-26T05:53:45","date_gmt":"2012-08-26T05:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=969"},"modified":"2012-08-26T05:53:45","modified_gmt":"2012-08-26T05:53:45","slug":"keeping-up-a-supply-of-grass-for-the-chickens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/?p=969","title":{"rendered":"Keeping up a supply of grass for the chickens"},"content":{"rendered":"

A month ago, I divided a turf into twelve seed trays for the chickens. This was to try to give the girls a supply of grass, a tray per day. The turfs were half price and were not in very good condition, I think they been rolled up for too long. They have kept growing for a month but were now looking really wet and boggy and much more sparse. I realized that as well as not being in the best condition, I hadn’t put any drainage in the trays and after a lot of rain they became water logged. I decided to start again with a new turf and do the job properly. The new turf is much greener and healthier looking. This time I put a layer of gravel in the bottom of the seed trays. I then put in a layer of sand which was left over from the chicken run and topped with a layer of lawn top soil. I cut the turfs and pressed them well down then watered them. This time I will leave them for a couple of weeks before giving them to the girls, to give them time to take root. I managed to fill thirteen trays and a small pot to get them started. I did throw the off cuts in to the chicken run for them but they keep flipping them over. When I emptied the old turfs out on to the veg plot, I could see how water logged they were and that hadn’t taken root. This gave the chickens lots of fun though, as they were full of worms which I tossed in to the run. The chickens had a great time hoovering them all up.<\/p>\n

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Thirteen trays of grass<\/p><\/div>\n

One of the reasons that I really want to make this work is that we have no grass in our garden, which means there are no grass cuttings for the chickens. We have a cottage style garden with a veg plot in front of the chicken enclosure and a small thyme lawn by our patio. I chose to plant a thyme lawn as the lawn is too small to mow and I like the fact that it is low maintenance, only needing a light snip with shears if it gets too leggy. Also in early summer it has a mass of pink and purple flowers which the bees love. In autumn the foliage is slightly purple, it’s also ever green and doesn’t brown during dry weather.<\/p>\n

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Thyme lawn and patio<\/p><\/div>\n

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Thyme lawn and the chicken enclosure at the top of the garden behind the runner beans<\/p><\/div>\n

I am much more hopeful that this time I will be able to keep the chickens in grass throughout the summer months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A month ago, I divided a turf into twelve seed trays for the chickens. This was to try to give the girls a supply of grass, a tray per day. The turfs were half price and were not in very … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=969"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1010,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/969\/revisions\/1010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.carolschickens.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}