Garden Chickens

[tortoise]

I read a snip somewhere yrs back about a lady reporting garden chickens were great except when young plants OR tomatoes ripened! She painted some rocks red and put them out...says once chickens got nothing pecking them they left red blobs alone, then she rarely lost any tomatoes.

Brilliant! Thank you for sharing this! My kids love painting rocks, so we will have to paint some realistic (ish) garden veggie rocks to train the chickens.

Uhm, I will also have to stop giving them squash halves.

 

[tortoise]

I told DH I only have 20 garden seasons left (a sobering way to think of lifespan) so I'm going to "do all the crazy things I've been wanting to try."

He has been warned!

I'm not convinced my few Silkies could maintain garden tunnels, its a lot of ground to cover.

My plan is shifting to permanent tunnels, two chicken tractors, and more chickens.

 

[tortoise]

I read a snip somewhere yrs back about a lady reporting garden chickens were great except when young plants OR tomatoes ripened! She painted some rocks red and put them out...says once chickens got nothing pecking them they left red blobs alone, then she rarely lost any tomatoes.

I'll have to paint strawberry rocks too!

 

[flowerbug]

I'll have to paint strawberry rocks too!

maybe they'll dull a few teeth of some chipmunks?

 

[Alaskan]

I highly recommend fencing the entire garden area and having chickens out there when you are done with the garden in the fall. Then put them in the garden in the spring until you are ready to plant.

I can't imagine having chickens in the garden while growing stuff. However, I like them stocked in the garden so that they kill all green stuff and reduce grubs and other parasites. In the spring they do the tilling and all weed seed eating.

 

[Perris]

do you know Harvey Ussery's book on The small scale poultry flock? He really gets the chickens to work on his patch! I don't implement the same methods as him, but I would still recommend that book to anyone keeping chickens, and especially if you want to utilize their full potential as cultivators and insecticides as well as providers of meat and eggs; it's full of good info and ideas.

 

[tortoise]

do you know Harvey Ussery's book on The small scale poultry flock? He really gets the chickens to work on his patch! I don't implement the same methods as him, but I would still recommend that book to anyone keeping chickens, and especially if you want to utilize their full potential as cultivators and insecticides as well as providers of meat and eggs; it's full of good info and ideas.

Thank you for the book suggestion! I requested it from the library and will have it soon!

 

[Trying2keepitReal]

My plan is shifting to permanent tunnels, two chicken tractors, and more chickens.

Have you thought more about this? The tunnels?

 

[FarmerJamie]

I did something similar, made a bunch of 2ft x 8ft rectangular frames with 2x4's, put chicken wire on them. Using some stakes and baler twine, I basically had "chicken panels" that I could configure as I wanted to create tunnels to boxed off areas. I did use sections as a "roof".

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures and hopefully this makes sense.

 

[Trying2keepitReal]

I did something similar, made a bunch of 2ft x 8ft rectangular frames with 2x4's, put chicken wire on them. Using some stakes and baler twine, I basically had "chicken panels" that I could configure as I wanted to create tunnels to boxed off areas. I did use sections as a "roof".

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures and hopefully this makes sense.

so how did you move them around? I could see one of my out-of-their mind Polish running for the hills because their confusion got the best of them.