One way to adjust the soil pH

Watching chooks in a dustbath is a bit like watching geese in a dam – they enjoy it so much. They don’t have lice (one of the things we have done in transitioning to deep litter is introduce predatory mites to prey on lice and red mites, and it seems to have worked nicely). They just like dustbaths.

When they’ve all had a good dustbath, I’ll empty the tray onto the ground and they will scratch the ash through the compost they are making. Wood ash is quite alkali – pH 9 to 11 – and as they scratch it into the compost they are making for me, it will gently raise the pH, and add calcium, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and some trace elements that the tree has mined from deep in the subsoil.