Tissues into eggs and keeping my neighbors happy…
We live in an urban area and fortunately have a tiny garden, where we grow trees, herbs, a few veggies and our hens.
The hens are the most productive of all our growing endeavors. We get between 11 and 17 eggs a week! We haven’t bought eggs since these girls started laying.
One of our main challenges is space. Not only the size of our yard. But, in this case, the distance from the coop and run to the neighbor’s bedroom window. It’s only a few yards…
See the window behind the fence? See the beautiful birds?
At 5:30 am when they start ‘bacbacbacbacbaaaaaaaaac’ our poor neighbors hear it too. And since I want to keep my neighbors happy so they don’t ask (or demand) I get rid of our beloved chickens, I need to find a way to make the hens stop ‘bacbac’ing.
What does all this have to do with tissues?!
At 5:30 am I need to be very persuasive with the hens (Black Bird, Sunny, and Blondie) and get them busy eating so they won’t bacbacbacbacbaaaaaaaaac under my neighbors’ window.
And what they really love is worms and grubs. Here is where our red worms come into the picture.
Red worms love high carbon materials, dry leaves, wood shavings, shredded paper and of course tissues. I empty out our waste paper baskets into our worm bin, along with other goodies I find for them. Such as carrot and apple pulp from nearby juice stalls, wood shaving with rabbit droppings from a petting zoo.
Then I water it thoroughly and let the worms do what they do best: eat, poop and reproduce.
Back to 5:30 am. Blackbird is standing in the run right in front of the worm bin saying bacbacbacbacbaaaaaaaaac, demanding to get a big clump of worms.
So I dig in with the hoe and “harvest” a special treat for the hens, they happily get to work digging the worms out and stop their clucking. And I crawl back under the covers, happy it’s quiet and that Blackbird, Sunny and Blondie are getting healthy proteins.