Chicken Bathing | Urban Chicken Podcast

Heated Chicken Spa – photo courtesy of Deb Bino

Wintertime this year has been especially brutal for some areas of the U.S. In particular, the New England states are reporting 20 year record-breaking snowfalls and cold temperatures.

Deb Bino, an Urban Chicken Podcast listener living in Pennsylvania, has come up with a clever way for her backyard chickens to get some relief from the winter weather — a chicken spa! Deb’s winter chicken spa is easily constructed and greatly appreciated by the birds who are as tired as their human owner of the endless snow this year.

Here is how Deb constructed her chicken spa to fight the winter blues. First she buried an electric, heated foot-mat in the bottom of a sand box under a mixture of sand, diatomaceous earth, wood ashes and peat moss. The sand mixtures is about five inches deep, which gives the birds plenty of material to dig and lay in. Being mindful of fire safety, Deb wrote that she carefully wrapped the cord to the heating pad in duct tape to keep the spa more secure.

Deb then constructed a simple box frame (roughly 4’x6′ in size) covered with clear plastic sheeting. This sheathed box frame is leaned against a building and over the chicken spa so that the birds can enjoy the warm sand mixture out of the elements. According to Deb, her wintertime chicken spa can comfortably accommodate four hens at a time. The flock has been greatly enjoying their heated oasis from the winter weather!

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Three Bucket Chicken Washing Method – Photo by Jen Pitino

Earlier this month, my sister and I dipped our toes into the pool of competitive chicken shows by entering several birds at our local county fair. When I first started down the backyard chicken trail, I would have never considered getting into showing chickens. So what changed?

New birds.

In fact, I have lots and lots of new chickens in my life which I have been remiss in telling you (the Urban Chicken Podcast family) all about. Late this past spring, I was generously gifted about 2 dozen rare and fancy breed day old chicks. I have been sharing those birds with my sister and niece (a few living at my house and the bulk of birds at hers). Consequently we have decided to try our hands at chicken breeding and hatching with some of the recent additions to our flock.

We are now at a point where between our established flocks and all of the newbie birds, we have more chickens than we know what to do with – and they keep growing and eating more and more. The hard truth is that we need to figure out which of our birds are of breeding quality and which are just pretty duds.

The timing of the local American Poultry Association (A.P.A.) sanctioned poultry show at our county fair was perfect! We could take a bunch of the birds that we really needed some professional feedback on and enter them into the chicken show. The birds would be inspected and judged by an A.P.A. certified poultry expert, and he would be able to give us the insight that we needed to move forward.

Now entering chickens into a show involves more than just scooping your birds out of the backyard and dropping them off at the fairgrounds. There is an important primping process involved in getting your chickens ready to strut their stuff for the judges. Today on the Urban Chicken Podcast, I walk you through how to get your birds ready to show – a process that I just experienced firsthand for the first time recently.

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