Dust Bathing Chickens

Sparkle the Welsummer Dust Bathing.

For a few weeks I've been aware of a shallow scraping in the sandy substrate of my chicken run.

No matter how often I filled the hole with fresh sand, my five chickens enjoyed nothing better than re-excavating it the moment my back was turned. Today I finally saw them using the scraping as a dust bath.

Dust bathing is a very natural part of a chicken's routine, but doesn't look that natural when you first see it. The chicken's legs are flailing as it lies awkwardly on its side. I've heard people say that it gives the impression the chicken is having some sort of seizure, but it is perfectly normal behaviour.

When a chicken dust bathes the particles help to clean its feathers of all manner of little critters that would otherwise live in there - things like fleas, lice and mites. In a chicken's natural habitat these dust baths would be the only way it had of removing parasites from its feathers.

It is always a good idea to have a small area of clean, dry ground set aside for dust bathing. 

I have never noticed parasites living in the feathers of my birds, but even so I give them a thorough dusting with red mite powder every month. The bedding of their chicken loft is regularly changed and sprinkled with diatomaceous earth, which helps kill lice and mites by shredding their outer coating.