Chickens are naturally clean. If their living conditions are ideal with enough space and the coop is kept clean, your chickens will usually look pretty good.

Because a Chicken Ark is designed to be moved around, the chickens get new ground to peck and graze, and to find dry spots to take a dust bath.

A chicken ark is easy and quick to make from simple chicken ark plans and means chickens can replicate natural behavior and be protected from predators – and you get to choose which parts of your backyard your chickens peck at and dust bath in.

The chickens will scratch through vegetation till they find dry, fine soil, then they make a shallow hollow where they sit and scratch so the dust gets sprayed over them.

This is Tina enjoying a bath – it illustrates the process perfectly.

One reason they take a bath, apart from the natural cleaning process, is that dust baths help keep mite infestations at bay. In addition to cleaning the chickens, dirt naturally clogs the respiratory pores of parasites, like lice and mites. When the respiratory pores of these parasites are clogged, they can no longer breathe and they die.

You will minimize mite and lice problems with a well–designed chicken ark that is easy to keep clean, and by making sure that your chickens have access to ground they can dust bathe on.

In wet weather you may want to add some sand mixed with some dry fine dirt to their chicken ark run, so your girls can still bathe easily.

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