What to do With a Dirty Chicken? Give it a Bath…..

I was planning on continuing my series of posts of “Lesser Known Plants for the Garden” today…..that is until I saw my sister’s latest blog post.

Now for those of you who may not be familiar with my youngest sister; she is a resident of Double S Farms where she lives with her family and my mother.  They are just a 5 minute drive from my house.

Last year, my sister decided to start raising chickens.  She took some classes and built a chicken coop with her husband’s help.  Then the chicks arrived in the mail…..they were absolutely adorable.

Start raising chickens

Since then, we have been witness to their antics….

They love eating food that drops from the kid’s dinner plates.  In this case macaroni and cheese.

 Trying to find some vegetables to eat….

And grateful recipients of their eggs…..

For those of you who have raised chickens, you know that sometimes they get dirty (you know where), and that can cause their eggs to also be dirty when they are laid.

Well, this was happening to my sister’s chicken, Flo.  And so something had to be done to solve Flo’s dirty problem.

Well, I learned something this week.

Did you know that you can give a chicken a bath?

I have mentioned before that my sister is somewhat of a trendsetter. Just look at her gloves…..aren’t they so cute?

There was no way around it….Flo needed a bath.  Now you would think that chickens would hate baths….kind of like cats.  My sister fully expected to have a fight on her hands involving scratches from Flo’s beak and claws.

Well Flo had some surprises in store for my sister…..

Little Farmer and Littlest Farmer decided to help their mother (Chicken Farmer) to get Flo clean.

Once she was put into the warm water, she was very calm and stayed still while she was being washed.  She actually seemed to enjoy it.

The weather was in the upper 70’s that day (warmer then usual this time of year) which was perfect.

You can see how dirty the water got (Flo had just gotten done rolling the dust).

Now Flo was a clean chicken.

But my sister wasn’t through yet….

Flo needed to be dried off.  Believe it or not, she didn’t mind the blow dryer at all.

I am sure that my sister never thought that she would ever be using her hair dryer on a chicken 😉

The other chickens were very curious at what was going on with Flo.  Maybe they were even jealous of the beauty treatment that Flo received. 

Next week, my sister is expecting a special delivery of some new chicks.  She had so much fun picking out the new breeds that they will add to their flock.  You can read about them and see pictures from her blog post.

***********************************

I will get right back to blogging about some more lesser-known plants for you to try out in your garden.

So stay tuned 🙂

Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."