For years now, I’ve waged war every autumn against the mountain of leaves from our maple, ash, and birch trees. We've made some progress by cutting down a few scruffy or poorly placed trees. The two compost bins that I installed out back years ago also are a big help, because they can hold large quantities of leaves.
Yet every year, the leaves win out in the end; there are just too many of them. Once the compost bins fill up, I find myself bagging leaves and setting them out curbside for the city to pick up and recycle.
Now, at last, an ally has emerged. Three of them, actually. Our hens: Snow, Stella and Nala.
Our coop and pen are designed for up to four chickens, so our trio certainly are not confined to an overly small space. But the pen, which once sat on a patch of lawn, now rests on bare earth, thanks to the voracious appetites of the hens. The denuded pen "floor" doesn’t provide much of a diversion for animals who love to peck.
Simply put, chickens living in such an environment get bored. So when I read recently that chickens love to play around in dry leaves, I figured I’d give it a try.
As soon as I tossed a bucketful of leaves into the pen, the girls morphed into hens gone wild. They immediately jumped into the pile, kicked the leaves around to expose any hidden bugs, and then pecked at their handiwork with great enthusiasm.
Although I saw nothing to satisfy a hen’s taste buds beyond the occasional worm, the girls obviously found much more lurking in the leaves. They chomped away at tasty morsels that were too small or inconspicuous to catch my eye.
Most telling of all, the ever-raucous Snow, our noisiest hen and the one who’s always begging for food even after she’s just been fed, had nothing to say as she danced and bobbed and kicked and nibbled. In no time flat, the leaves were shredded into tiny bits, much as my old chipper-shredder would have done, only more efficiently and without using any fossil fuels.
Who knew that a constantly cackling hen and her pals would be the key to my leaf-disposal problems?
No comments:
Post a Comment