Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Make sure we can have a dust bath: our feathers are fabulous at keeping us warm and protected BUT creepy crawlies such as lice and mites love them too and will often try to make to make their homes in our feathers where they can keep warm and dry. This makes us itch or worse, the little *&^$!~ bite us and make us sore...

BUT we have a great way of getting rid of them, we roll around in the dirt/soil and shake them out, this is called dustbathing!! We do need places to do this though: bare bits of soil are perfect and ideally if they are under cover so they usually don't get wet, so the better!!

We often dustbath under our houses or bushes and trees here on the smallholding and we really enjoy doing it as a group and having a good natter at the same time.