We can talk about the miraculous uses of Food Grade diatomaceous earth.

Any takers?

codsey-baby? 

Dad had this crazy idea that we have a rooster and a hen run about our yard, in the middle of suburbia. I never got an idea how that worked. The first night, Dad found out that roosters crow at 4am in the morning. Dad had to plonk it under the upturned bin at night to keep it quiet. Our dog enjoyed following both hen and rooster around the yard each day.

Other than that, I had no interest in having them around the house.

How many of those new hive gadgets you got now?

President Elect, The Mechanic wrote on Sep 30^th, 2016 at 9:43pm:


Long term, they will pay their way.   

President Elect, The Mechanic wrote on Sep 30^th, 2016 at 9:34pm:


Nice hat.... they make em for men ?

Lord Herbert wrote on Sep 30^th, 2016 at 9:06pm:



We have sixteen including the four chicks hatched about two months ago. Be careful with the DE, while it is great for parasite control if placed in too confining an area can cause respiratory issues. We dust each bird under the wings and give a dose on the chute.  It will also kill honey bees if they get into it. We feed non-gmo layer crumbles, lettuce, tomato and pumpkin when in season. We let them free range when I can be close to keep an eye out for Chicken Hawks.

Two of our birds are Roosters, one is a serama and is about nine inches tall. He hates any male who has reached puberty but he loves women and small children. The other is a breed called showgirl.

Black Orchid wrote on Sep 30^th, 2016 at 9:30pm:


Diatomaceous Earth (DE) is something I only just learnt about yesterday. It delivers the Death of a Thousand Cuts to lice, mites, and even intestinal worms on and in chickens.

About 6 months ago a hen suddenly appeared in my backyard after - I suspect - escaping from the backyard of neighbours in the next street who sold up and moved away.

I've let it roam free at front and back where it makes the crossing by going under the house.

Someone said they're social animals, and so I brought back another hen to keep it company. After a couple of weeks the new hen disappeared for a couple of days, and so I got another one to keep the original one company.

But then the second hen showed up again from - I guess - under the house where it had been brooding.

It has been this third hen that is the problem. It looks like it's been used as a wrecking-ball on a building site. Half the feathers are missing, and then I found it is infested with mites and lice.

Mites suck the blood, making chickens anaemic, and lice live on the flaking skin and lay their eggs in a tight compact bundle attached to the base of feathers on their backside - very hard to shift physically.

And now it seems this Diatomaceous Earth could be the answer to rescuing the hen from a hellish death from anaemia and simply from being eaten alive by parasites.

My next problem is to find out where they sell this stuff, and where I can buy it without having to take out a Second Mortgage on my house.

'Daisy' - that's her name - is a feisty little lady despite all these hangers-on who are making a meal of her.

If I don't get her into prime condition my niece is going to kill me.

DIATOMACEOUS EARTH is fossilised 'hard-shell' algae from millions of years ago, and isn't really an 'earth' but a composite of little corpses.