What plants are you growing?

MarigoldHen

Hatching
Mar 26, 2017
4
0
7
What plants / veggies / herbs / etc are you growing in and around your run and coop?

I'm just getting my coop and run set up and would love to make the run (about 25 feet x 25 feet) productive and beautiful for the girls. I'd like some veggies, fruits, herbs and other hen safe plants planted in and around the coop and run.

What are your top choices for chicken safe plants?
 
What plants / veggies / herbs / etc are you growing in and around your run and coop?

I'm just getting my coop and run set up and would love to make the run (about 25 feet x 25 feet) productive and beautiful for the girls. I'd like some veggies, fruits, herbs and other hen safe plants planted in and around the coop and run.

What are your top choices for chicken safe plants?

It sounds as if you're thinking of growing stuff where the chickens can range in it?

We've learned that if we don't want the chickens to destroy plantings, then we need a physical barrier to keep them out. We have done a lot of bare-root tree plantings on our three acres. The chickens have stripped the mulch away and even killed the young trees in their foraging. We've erected 3-foot tall fences around flower beds to keep them out (works so far, but no guarantees). We fence our garden. I've even had to completely fence off the compost pile; otherwise, the chickens get into it while they're foraging and scatter it over a wide area.

I have a 10-foot tall black hills spruce tree that I'm concerned about. The chickens decided that the area under the tree was the perfect daytime shady hangout and dust bath area. They have stripped the soil from underneath the tree canopy and in the process have damaged the root ball. It may not survive.

My wife's pride and joy wildflower garden (about 200 square feet in size) may not come back this year as the birds have hammered it last fall and through the winter.

The chickens are absolutely relentless while they're free-ranging.

Around our place, the effort has gone into keeping the plants safe from the chickens, rather than the other way around.

We plant way more greens in the garden than we can consume ourselves, with the thought that the chickens will consume what we don't. But the chickens don't get to range into the garden and select what they want.

OBTW: I don't try to keep grass or anything else growing inside the run. It seems a bit a of a useless drill to me. Our birds look at anything green as potential food and it will be gone in one day, two max.

We enjoy our birds and have fun with keeping them. However, some things are not free-range chicken compatible; landscaping and gardens are two of them in my view.
 
Last edited:

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom