Anyone else's chickens tearing up your yard? - Page 2

Chickens are attracted to landscaping to destroy, gardens you want to eat, and places you want to walk.

 

To solve this problem, we don't landscape, fence the gardens in, and just watch our steps. LOL

 

Chickens love bugs in mulch, how well it digs up, and the goodies found in and around shrubs. Any tender plants will be eaten or scratched to bits. And if you have a porch or car port, they will sit there and poop all over it. My chickens have no fences keeping them in anywhere, have over a cleared acre they could roam with bushes, trees, dust piles, leaves, but NO, they will concentrate around the cars, on the front porch, and in the gardens if they can sneak in. 

I gave up on a nice looking yard the day we decided to get all these birds lol! The muscovies hardly let my lawn grow (which isn't a bad thing I guess) and the chickens love, love, love flower beds. I can usually get them to stay out of my veggy garden since it's a raised bed with fencing around it but even at that I still catch one in there every now and again. It's just another one of the joys of free ranging!

This would be a gorgeous green lawn if it weren't for the girls. *SIGH*

 

I can have birds, I can have a lawn. There are days I wonder about my choice...;)

 

Those of you that fence your gardens...will a 36" high fence keep them out? Working on fencing our garden this year so WE can have some veggies this year

I use a 30 inch tall fence to fence out the chickens. That said.... it is certainly not fool proof and they do get in if they decide to get off their lazy butts and just jump over it. They have been known to fly up to the roof of the house... the fence just prevents the whole flock from migrating across and leaving a path of destruction at once. The fence just greatly discourages them from killing the garden, as it's easier to just roam the acre or more of free space than it is to get into a tiny fenced area. 

 

 

If you string a line about 4" over the top of that fence, they can't get over it. A chicken flies up to the top of a fence, perches a second, then goes on the other side. With that line up there, they can't do that. I use weedeater line up on sticks fastened to the fence. Works great. Course I'd go 4' on the fence as well.