Gardening with chickens

[Chic Rustler]

We use chickens in the garden alot. They fertilize, eat pests, till, and it saves money on feed!

 

[cabinguy]

I always thought it would be good to rotate garden with a chicken pen every other year, with the coop in the middle. The downside would be you need a large area.

 

[Mini Horses]

Read once where a lady liked chickens in the garden, after plants were large enough to allow them in, but she hated their attacking a ripe tomato. She then painted some rocks red and placed them about the rows of tomato plants before the fruits ripened. The chickens pecked at the rocks, got nothing. She swears they rarely attacked a real tomato after. Probably so. A golf ball in a nest will "help" stop an egg eater once they get nothing a few times. They ain't dumb!

 

[BarredBuff]

More power to you. Mine eat my tomatoes, and dig out my straw.

 

[Britesea]

DH and his family used to do a 3 year rotation with the garden. They had 3 30x30 plots side by side. Year 1- Garden in plot 1, Pigs in plot 2, Plot 3 was covered with compostables of all types, allowing the chickens free run. Year 2- Pigs in plot 1, plot 2 compost, plot 3- garden. Year 3- Compost in plot 1, garden in plot 2, pigs in plot 3. Rinse and repeat. In the spring, they just went out there and scraped back the top layer of compost and dropped the seeds in (jump back or it'll hit you in the eye!). After almost 30 years of doing this, the soil was absolutely amazing. If I could have afforded a couple of dump trucks to haul it up to Oregon when we moved, I would have!

@milkmansdaughter I will look to see if I have some pictures.
@Mini Horses I have some leftover 1" chicken wire mesh that I might be able to use like you suggest. I can even see that being good under the frost cloth to hold it up a little better...

 

[Hope Hughes]

We are SLOWLY working on getting our garden and huge fenced in free range pen going and when we are ready to pull all the plants from the garden we can just open an attached tunnel and let the chickens go wild in our raised bed garden(that isnt built yet lol )

But when we have our 40x30 garden in Oklahoma we had a fenced garden and let our chickens in once all plants were full grown and wouldnt be hurt by them and they were amazing bug control. And they only te tomatoes on the ground or really low. But we had alot of grasshoppers and they usually just went for those.

 

[Britesea]

I've heard of doing the same thing in the strawberry bed

 

[Chic Rustler]

I always thought it would be good to rotate garden with a chicken pen every other year, with the coop in the middle. The downside would be you need a large area.
View attachment 8424

Thats a great idea. Doesnt look too big to me.

 

[Hinotori]

I use chickens to clear grass and weeds from areas. I just pen them there until they scratch everything to death. With how fast grass and weeds sprout and grow here, they are super useful.

The litter from the coop is great for the garden beds as well.

 

[Mini Horses]

They DO love a ripe tomato and tender young plants If you have a way to pen those off, it can help. But, many things they don't mess with and not everyone uses mulch. It is a consideration. For me, it's after garden is well matured.

Many years ago I had a garden, fenced, and a flock of free range chickens. There were about a dozen young roosters who decided to fly into the garden. They scratched up several of my young tomato plants. Ran them out, moved them to another area and replanted. Couple days later, got my plants again. That night I caught them all, caged them & following morn...butchered. Don't mess with my tomato PLANTS!!

Since then, I'm not wanting them in there until plants get established. I can deal with a couple tomatoes -- not all the plants. They do tend to like to scratch at the base of the plants and any area you have seedlings you know they will kill them all.