Chickens loose in garden?

Several years of experience. Chickens love foraging in traditional vegetable gardens. If a successful garden is important to you, you shouldn’t let them in a traditional vegetable garden when the plants are young and tender; they love to eat them or will scratch them right out of the ground looking for insects. They also love the red, ripe strawberries, tomatoes, seaberries, raspberries, blueberries….and will pluck them right off the plants. They will also dig up mulch looking for insects, worms and grubs. They might also decide that your vegetable garden is the perfect place for a dust bath which can be very destructive to young plants.

After your plants are well established, one trick is to let them into the garden for about an hour before sunset. That gives them time to find and eat some of those pesky insects without wreaking too much havoc on your plants. At dusk, they will return to their roosts. Another choice would be to have just a few chickens in a large area so they won’t do as much damage. I have let the mother hen and chicks range freely while the chicks are growing up. Then you are sharing the harvest with them, but be aware that they might take bites out of many red tomatoes rather than eating one tomato entirely. Another untested idea would be to use polyculture perennial gardening which I think would allow you to have chickens in the garden without as much damage.

I love having chickens, fresh eggs and the lovely manure-mulch they provide to use in my gardens. I have learned that I would rather have them live in the pasture, except during fall clean-up and for short, controlled visits to the garden during the summer.

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

By ‘polyculture’ do you mean the cages that are used when people are growing the chickens as ‘free range’ Robin? that they move from spot to spot? And by the way, Thank you enormously for the detailed answer. You’ve given me several things to consider…:)

-- Alynxia****Set yourself as the standard.****

We use a chicken tractor for ours, was cheap to make and keeps the gals safer from predators as well as allowing them to be in the garden where you want them to be. Moving them in a tractor keeps them from destroying any one section of ground. We made our with chicken wire, wood strapping and some wheels from an old stroller.

There are many different designs and for two small seabrights it won’t need to be very big. I prefer them on wheels for ease of movement.

Tractors

-- Xploreorganics, 5b Canada, LFD 06-20

You are welcome. I don’t have time to answer right now. Check out my project on chicken/chicken housing and all the other GT comments and I will write what I imagine when I use the term polyculture vegetable garden when I have more time. Like XO, I use a chicken tractor. If you do a search on chickens (Use the search box up at the top of the page.), you will see other forms of chicken housing used by Garden Tenders.

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

XploreOrganics has the answer in the chicken tractor and Robins is very similar.

I have chickens too and a short answer…........if left to “free range”...they will tear your gardens to shreds. I currently have the Red and black sex link breed and they are very very good at shredding anything and everything, also they are dual purpose layer/meat.

I did notice (sorry dont remember the breed) that the last batch of hens were rust coloured and only layers, I had their beeks cropped and they didnt rip much up.

I plan to fence mine into a 1/4 acre square otherwise they might wind up in the soup pot…..also going to fence in the garden

-- Central northish Ontario

Now I’m sure i won’t be letting the little buggers go! And I’m liking your chickens better than mine Greenthumb. I think I’d prefer good layers AND meat chickens. I was raised on a farm and have no issues with the wooden stump and axe, not to sound horrible, but I believe if you eat what you kill it’s all good. Organic chicken meat sounds good too. :)
Is that the name of the breed? ‘Red and black sex link?’

-- Alynxia****Set yourself as the standard.****

I forget what I have, its either red sex link or black sex link

I used to have roosters

maybe the chickens dont know who should get the fathers day card?

-- Central northish Ontario

Check out this chicken-related blog XO wrote if you haven’t seen it already.

A few thoughts about selecting the right breed of chicken….

There are many kinds of dual purpose chickens if that is what you want. I enjoy my Buff Orpingtons. They tend to be consistent layers and are beautiful, gentle dual-purpose birds.

Due to our cold winters, I have chosen to raise only “heavy chickens” because they withstand the cold winters better. With the warmer weather in Florida, you might want to think of a breed that does well in the heat. I have read that Minorcas, Blue Andalusians, Golden Campines, Light Brown Leghorns and White Leghorns are good warm-weather choices.

I noticed that you initially chose Seabrights which are small birds. If you want small birds, consider choosing a bantam. They are miniature chickens, usually 1/4 the size of standard chickens. Bantams tend to do well in warm weather.

Reading recommendation: If you are interested in pasturing your chickens, read Pastured Poultry Profits by Joel Salatin. Although it is geared toward making money by raising and slaughtering chickens, I found it to be very informative about raising pastured chickens in general.

-- Robin, Massachusetts - "Live simply so others can simply live." M. Gandhi

I had a pair of Bantams, small cute little chickens. The Rooster was as tough as nails and always protected his hen no matter how big the foe. She would lay really small eggs but three would make a nice omellete.

Sometimes both would lie on their backs and she would lay her head on his wing and “snuggle up”......very cute birds and they didnt seem to shred the plants that much.

Sadly Mr. Coyote got them both.

-- Central northish Ontario

If you really want bug control get yourself a pair of guineas and set them loose.. They will keep your property and anyone else near by clear of ticks and annoying bugs far better than chickens.

They also make good security alarms as they’re noisy as crud and scream when they see someone wondering around.

They also make awful parents and 99.9% of the time are too stupid to sit on their own eggs..

But other than that.. Way better than chickens.. :D

But, as far as egg laying birds go… I’ve now sworn by Red Sex-Links… Their eggs are HUGE.. They never fail at laying.. And they are friendly birds. My others, not so much.. Smaller eggs.. Often with blood spots or meat spots in them.. Those are baking eggs. Heck, my Ameraucana lay better eggs than my Rocks and Wyandotte.

-- Planting Daylilies in Kentucky, zone 6b

My sex links stopped laying eggs…..............maybe its just too cold? but when they did lay eggs…...HUGE, often double yokes

-- Central northish Ontario

too cold. Mother Nature is weighing her odds of survival of the young.

-- jroot

Very interesting discussion. I am new to all this and enjoyed every word. I love this site because of the free exchange of information and experience among GTs. I am planning to get a small farm where I can keep chicken and observe all the above valuable suggestions. Thank u all and Alynxia in particular for starting this topic. The picture of silver seabright hens is very nice.
Sharad

-- Bagwan-- “If someone feels that they had never made a mistake in their life, then it means they have never tried a new thing in their life”.-Albert Einstein

I know Sharad, that’s why I posted and at first thought I wanted them. But then found out too small, and like
Robin and Greenthumb mentioned, dual is what I’m looking for. Hey, good luck with that farm too :)

-- Alynxia****Set yourself as the standard.****

This site will be of great use to you… Assuming you have not already gone through it.

http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/chooks/chooks.html

-- Planting Daylilies in Kentucky, zone 6b

Scott you have given a very informative site. Thanks for posting.
Sharad

-- Bagwan-- “If someone feels that they had never made a mistake in their life, then it means they have never tried a new thing in their life”.-Albert Einstein

our place is much too small for chickens but I have always wanted to have a few for eggs. The info on how to “manage” the chickens for taking care of garden pests while not becoming garden pests themselves is great. I hope one day to be able to use all this info in my own garden.

-- This will be my second year finding out what will grow in my garden space! Fun fun fun! Zone 8, BC.