Chicken Weed Abatement - Using chickens to mow your weeds! - With Video

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Nifty-Chicken

Nifty-Chicken

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This is from 2007:

I noticed my 7 chickens were keeping our weeds completely under control in our 2,000 sq/ft non-landscaped yard. I decided to try something. I penned them in an area where they hadn't been yet (full of weeds) and setup a camera to take a picture every 15 minutes.

Having the girls keep the weeds down has helped tremendously in an area that has previously been a nightmare to mow and weed wack due to rocks, trees, etc. Thanks girls!!!

Below are the results of putting 7 hens in a 12 x 12 area for about 5 hours.

BEFORE:



AFTER:



VIDEO:
 
Last edited:
I have a small, suburban fenced yard. I like to let my girls out for yard time regularly. They like to scratch for goodies along the fence. By the time they are done it looks better than if I had raked it!
 
That is SO cool, Rob! I loved that second chance to see it slower. :D

My flock keeps two-thirds of an acre absolutely free of weeds. Free of roses, dafodils, grass, sprouts, just about anything green. With chickens and waterfowl, nothing is safe. They have even managed to take vinca down to nearly nothing...

Green stuff within seven or eight inches of the perimeter fence hasn't a chance, either. So neatly manicured in a swath just goose neck-length wide.
 
I've trained my chickens to do the weed work too. When they see the temporary fence come up they know where to go. They seem to understand that it's their job. Such useful critters! I may change my mind about this when spring gets here and I want something to grow!
smile.png
 
I make "penettes" fashioned after my cloches for the garden and move them throughout the garden and yard. I found out the easy way that my hens could clear an area of grass and weeds faster and cheaper than any other animal. I just noticed one day that their pen area which use to be nice and green was now nothing but dirt...no vegetation...I also feed my girls weeds which don't make it into the compost heap. Free food is great!
 
I have 7.5 acres, so my flock of 11 (9 hens, 2 roos) can't take care of all the weeds (and most of the acreage is weeks or scrub), but I also have 2 horses, and they do an AWESOME job of breaking up the manure piles for me. It is so funny to watch them move from pile to pile picking out whatever looks good to them. And they scratch through the piles and spread them around in the process, meaning I don't have to pick up many piles at all. I hope that in time (if we get any rain, ugh) that between the horses and chickens, I start having little swaths of bermuda grass spring up (I feed bermuda hay) to replace some of the weeds. I did notice a HUGE decrease in the numbers of scorpions in my house after the girls were big enough to free range ... I never knew they would eat so many kinds of bugs.

Thanks for the video - very cute!
 
Cool video. Thanks for sharing. My four girls haven't quite got to the stage of reducing the ground to soil yet. But they're getting there.... Maybe a little rain could help - we haven't had any all year! The ground is like concrete.
 

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