A grave problem with gravel

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008
Gravel on a beach in Thirasia, Santorini, Greece.

Image via Wikipedia

Tomorrow night sees the BBC broadcast the first episode of its re-imagining of the late, great [[Terry Nation]]’s 70s cult sci-fi classic Survivors, which tells the story of a post-apocalyptic world where the majority of humans have succumbed to plague, and died. If any of our neighbours saw me in the back garden today, wearing a surgical mask soaked in CK Summer cologne while I cleared away one of my biggest garden disasters ever, they might have thought I was performing an homage to the show; that, or they might have got hysterical about bird flu. If you have hens, take it from me—never, ever use gravel as a flooring for their run. It doesn’t work, and it ends up stinking to high heaven no matter what you try.

I took the advice to go for gravel from someone on a self-sufficiency forum I frequent, when I asked thereon three months or so ago about alternatives to bark chippings. I had read in a magazine that bark chippings can carry fungal spores that lead to respiratory infections. Having dealt with an outbreak of mycoplasma earlier this year I was keen to do all I could to minimise the risk of our birds coming down with the same again. Of course, the most likely cause was the dreadful, persistently wet summer (which alllowed all manner of fungal things to party like it was 1999) although I did, for a long time, use bark chippings in ignorance of the risks involved.

I’ve been using wood chip, or play bark, as opposed to bark chippings, in the hens’ larger enclosure for almost three months. Again, wood chip was recommended on the forum. I used gravel in their smaller area, where they have their feeder and drinker.The idea was, a quick weekly sloosh and it would be clean and fresh. Easy.

A cock and a hen roosting together.

Image via Wikipedia

The wood chip was supposed to last up to six months minimum but I had to clear all of it away yesterday because it was already a bit smelly and fit for the compost bins only (where it will do an excellent job breaking down everything else). Six months my bum. Yeah, probably—if you have just two hens traversing an area the size of Madonna’s back garden. If, on the other hand, you have a reasonably large (by British standards) back garden and 14 hens, you can forget it.

Still, while the wood chip was slightly more expensive than bark chippings, kilogram for kilogram, it lasted much longer than the bark chippings did, and without carrying the same risk of fungal infection. So I will stick to using wood chip, definitely.

The gravel experiment was an unmitigated disaster. The hens drove it deep into the clay soil with their feet, and no amount of serious weekly disinfection—using stuff that ought to be illegal across the globe and could likely strip flesh from bone—was able to shift the smell. It got worse and worse as time went by. It hummed. I could even smell it just a little today through the mask and sweet cologne. I close my eyes, I can still conjure up the memory of the smell. I don’t think I will ever forget it.

My beloved came outside to talk to me and nearly choked, standing about fifteen feet away to have a conversation with someone who looked like a demented, mud-covered surgeon (the mask, you see). Yes it was that bad. I’m just glad the neighbours haven’t been out in their gardens since the summer. It’s now the season of closed windows and doors, not open ones. Thank the Gods.

I dredged the evil stuff up with a rake, and then flushed the newly exposed black ground with water. I left the run to dry out for a few hours before I put some wood chip down. All is sweet and right with the world again. At last.

The question is, what do I do with all the gravel?

I originally used four big bags of the stuff. I got as much of it as I could out of the run and onto the little bit of lawn that’s right next to the run, where it sits still. I swear it’s steaming, and I’ve seen a skull-and-crossbones in the vapours. I’ve flushed it with water several times now, and over the next week or so the smell will fade (because it won’t have 14 hens romping all over it in daylight hours).

If it was easy to clean I could repurpose it, but so far rinsing it with a hose seems to clean the top gravel just fine, but a quick rake-over reveals more icky dark ichor underneath. I’m not going to hand-sieve the whole bloody lot, that’s for sure, and if it rains—as likely, or snows—over the next week or so, a significant amount will probably become embedded into the turf. I was thinking I might just dig it all into the soil, which is the most atrociously compacted clay I’ve ever had to work with. I don’t know if it would do any good… it might help… but I don’t think it would make the water retention problems any worse, either. I don’t think that patch of ground has had a spade taken to it since 1953. Seriously.

Picture of a Caterpillar 826C landfill compact...

Image via Wikipedia

I’m just thinking right now that out of sight is out of mind. And for someone who does everything possible to avoid sending household waste to landfill, the irony of my being very keen on burying a messy, stinky problem because it might be the most convenient and quick solution is not lost on me. I feel vaguely and unfairly hypocritical (because it’s not like I’m dumping plastic bottles or toxic waste). But what else can I do?

I leave you for now with some interesting smelly-themed links to other stories elsewhere on the net—plus a couple about Survivors as well.

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categories: animals, home farmer