Help!!! My Chickens Are Eating My Garden!!!!

[Happy Chicken Mama]

My Husband & I have nine sweet... adorable... wonderful... friendly... spoiled chicken monsters! The lovely little buggars love (love is too small a word... It is their ‘supreme joy’) to eat all of our attempts to vegetable garden. We have decided to fence (white picket) in an area to garden because they eat everything. How do we keep them from going in without fencing in the top???

Our three Arracaunas (Otherwise known as the 'flower-bed digger-upper', 'I can't believe you jus ate $50 dollars worth of @$%*&-ing snapdragons that I planted yesterday & 'I hope that flower was good that I see haning out your mouth because I had it shipped from Japan and it won't &%$@-ing bloom for another five years & thanks for not letting me at least see it before you ate it'!) fly clear over our seven foot privacy fence so I am quite sure that there is no fence high enough.

Needless to say, I have turned our yard and home into a bit of a “Martha” cottage and I am afraid that veggies in a large cage just won’t go with our current décor…

The area that we are sectioning off is about 6 feet by 75 feet with short raised beds.

Does anyone have any ideas how we can have our eggs and tomatoes too???

Help! Thanks!!!

 

[Bailey28]

Have you ever considered putting up bird netting around it but also putting... some rope such as baler twine around the top of it to prevent them from landing in it... at my farm we did the same thing but we did this along there enclosure so that we would not have to chase them around at night to put them in the barn.

 

[tataharris]

I love that description.... I'm wondering the same thing.... So I hope there are lots of good suggestions.....

 

[wegotchickens]

First off, I'd do some wing-clipping to slow those girls down.

Next, I'd buy some bird netting to string up around the perimeter of the garden. We've got some over our strawberries, and it isn't real obvious unless you're looking for it.

I have garden beds. The girls check it out, but haven't picked in it much. But I'm protecting the strawberries anyway, just in case. This is their first year of production and I know my girls already love berries!

 

[Guitartists]

Not to belittle your problem.... but....

Oh my! Sounds like you are having quite a time of it. I wish I had something to offer as far as advice, but I have never dealt with chickens AND gardens.

Best of luck though! I'm sure someone here will have valuable first-hand knowledge of how to fix it!

 

[tataharris]

I've done the wing-clipping thing, but mine still found a way over a 4-foot fence.... But the bird netting is a good idea....

 

[Rte.66_chicks]

Some people say to just clip one wing to throw them off balance, but I found that they could still get enough lift with one full wing to get over a 4 ft. fence. So the next night, they got the other wing clipped, too. Fairly short, too, so they couldn't get any lift. Then fence everything you don't want them in.

 

[BrahmaMama]

Or, just have extremely heavy birds (like my Brahmas

) that can't lift their big butt over the fence :lol

My garden is right next to my coops-literally; crazy I know. I haven't been able to plant yet (lovely South Dakota weather) but we are in the process of putting a fence up anyway...for the chickens, and the darn rabbits.

 

[zatsdeb]

we fenced in our garden, and I have come to realize that with goats and chickens I had to limit my flowers to a small section fenced in by my front door!! The vegie garden however is huge, and we don't let the chickens in there until everything is growing good, but they still want to pick at the tomato's!!!!
Guineas however will do wonders in the garden, they only look for bugs!!

 

[NoelTate]

My coop has a wire top, so my chickens do not get out. I usually keep two or three in the back yard with my flower beds though just to have them closer and to help keep bugs off the plants. I guess I have been really lucky-the only thing I have lost has been one or two wild daylillies. They really don't dig my beds up or eat my plants. When I had a pen without a top, I had these mixed bantams that flew like birds. I clipped one wing to throw them off balance, but that only stopped a few of them.
It's funny how Martha Stewart, P. Allen Smith, and the gardening editor in my local paper all show pics of their chickens loose in the garden, but they never admit to the problem of the chickens eating the garden! I guess that would not be quite as romantic a picture lol
Good luck!