Backyard chickens vs nice backyard

[Sheena W.]

Hi,
I live in a suburbia neighborhood where the neighbors maintain their front and back yard well. We also just changed our sod 3 years ago so we have a nice clean manicured grass lawn with a gardener coming in every 2 weeks. It's a small yard...just about 1,500 sqft of grass. We started having backyard chickens, and they have been good and just roaming in the dirt section on the edges of the yard, so they have not bothered the grass. However, I think as the chickens get bigger, I am afraid free ranging them will leave larger poop in the lawn and that would not be easy to clean. Also, I can't have any bigger coop without ruining my grass. It has to be put on my patio, but then the poop moves to the deck. Is it just impossible to have chickens and a nice lawn? I have seen pictures of chicken coops and they are mostly on dirt. I don't have a large section of dirt.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

When we first started, we had a decent back yard. (Mind you, I'm on 1/3 acre with about a half of that in back yard lawn).

Our first year, with a small flock (4 hens), the yard looked BETTER. The chickens aerated and fertilized the lawn.

Then, we got more birds. We went to 9 hens. The lawn looked good the first year, but began to show wear.

We fenced the perimeter of our backyard to allow for a lawn square in the middle. That worked for a while. However, you have to keep their wings clipped, or they hop over the barrier for new bugs and grass.

Then we got even more birds.

I have very little lawn left as the birds do love to eat the grass.

I also have no weeds. My son is actually pretty happy as he never has to mow the back lawn now.

So if you keep a very small number of birds for your lawn size, you may actually see some improvement in the lawn with minimal grazing.

But overtime, with chicken scratching and grazing, I can't imagine your yard won't suffer some. It will likely grow better in some areas and less in others depending upon the grazing and scratching patterns of your birds.

So if your heart is to have a pristine, golf course pretty lawn, I'd recommend you keep the chickens on bark/dirt at the perimeters or on a designated spot at a corner.

You could keep bantams which require less space, and you could create a really pretty coop and pen with dirt yard for them to scratch. Bantams, especially Silkies and Cochins, don't need a whole lot of scratching space and are pretty docile in a smaller pen....but they do need some room.

My experiences.
LofMc

 

[lazy gardener]

Yes, you can have a nice lawn, and a small(ish) coop and run with a bit of maintenance and thinking outside of the box. How many birds? The general recommendation is for 4 s.f. in coop, and 10 s.f. in run per bird. If you crowd them any more than that, you will have a difficult time managing them. I would suggest that you make your run 6' high, and cover it. This will allow you to walk into it. Turn that run into a deep litter run: put your spent coop litter, grass clippings, leaves, hay, garden debris, any other yard debris into the run. The goal is to create a layer that is a minimum of 6" deep. The chickens will gladly work this area over every day to turn it into lovely black compost. Their poop will not accumulate in this run, nor will it smell. It will magically melt into the soil, and the chickens will have a job to do: turning that compost as they harvest the beneficial insects that will proliferate there. They will also benefit from beneficial fungii and bacteria that will build their gut flora and immunity. As a result, you will see your feed bill go down.

Yes, you do see pictures on chicken coops with bare dirt runs. I pity such chickens. No chicken should spend her life in a naked soil run. It simply doesn't have to be that way. IMO, naked soil is on it's way to becoming sick.

Now that you've provided them with a healthy alternative to tearing up your lawn, you can let them out when you decide to, so you can determine how much wear and tear you allow on your lawn. Your hose can be used on jet setting to blast those chicken bombs into oblivion.

However, you give me a bit of concern regarding your nicely kept lawn: do you have it sprayed with herbicide/fungicide/insecticides??? If so, I would have issues with allowing my birds on such a lawn.

 

[Sheena W.]

Yes, you can have a nice lawn, and a small(ish) coop and run with a bit of maintenance and thinking outside of the box. How many birds? The general recommendation is for 4 s.f. in coop, and 10 s.f. in run per bird. If you crowd them any more than that, you will have a difficult time managing them. I would suggest that you make your run 6' high, and cover it. This will allow you to walk into it. Turn that run into a deep litter run: put your spent coop litter, grass clippings, leaves, hay, garden debris, any other yard debris into the run. The goal is to create a layer that is a minimum of 6" deep. The chickens will gladly work this area over every day to turn it into lovely black compost. Their poop will not accumulate in this run, nor will it smell. It will magically melt into the soil, and the chickens will have a job to do: turning that compost as they harvest the beneficial insects that will proliferate there. They will also benefit from beneficial fungii and bacteria that will build their gut flora and immunity. As a result, you will see your feed bill go down.

Yes, you do see pictures on chicken coops with bare dirt runs. I pity such chickens. No chicken should spend her life in a naked soil run. It simply doesn't have to be that way. IMO, naked soil is on it's way to becoming sick.

Now that you've provided them with a healthy alternative to tearing up your lawn, you can let them out when you decide to, so you can determine how much wear and tear you allow on your lawn. Your hose can be used on jet setting to blast those chicken bombs into oblivion.

However, you give me a bit of concern regarding your nicely kept lawn: do you have it sprayed with herbicide/fungicide/insecticides??? If so, I would have issues with allowing my birds on such a lawn.

Oh that is a good idea. Are you sure the thick layer of grass debris can hide the poop? This would be amazing. Because the smell is my concern. Right now I have to use a rabbit house as a coop and put it on my patio and the poop on the deck attracts flies like crazy so I have been hosing that to the dirt part of the lawn twice a day to prevent the flies from coming in. I even gag when i clean the poop because the smell is too strong for my nose. The smell is just atrocious. And no, the gardener and I do not use pesticides. So the grass is as organic as it can be.

 

[Sheena W.]

When we first started, we had a decent back yard. (Mind you, I'm on 1/3 acre with about a half of that in back yard lawn).

Our first year, with a small flock (4 hens), the yard looked BETTER. The chickens aerated and fertilized the lawn.

Then, we got more birds. We went to 9 hens. The lawn looked good the first year, but began to show wear.

We fenced the perimeter of our backyard to allow for a lawn square in the middle. That worked for a while. However, you have to keep their wings clipped, or they hop over the barrier for new bugs and grass.

Then we got even more birds.

I have very little lawn left as the birds do love to eat the grass.

I also have no weeds. My son is actually pretty happy as he never has to mow the back lawn now.

So if you keep a very small number of birds for your lawn size, you may actually see some improvement in the lawn with minimal grazing.

But overtime, with chicken scratching and grazing, I can't imagine your yard won't suffer some. It will likely grow better in some areas and less in others depending upon the grazing and scratching patterns of your birds.

So if your heart is to have a pristine, golf course pretty lawn, I'd recommend you keep the chickens on bark/dirt at the perimeters or on a designated spot at a corner.

You could keep bantams which require less space, and you could create a really pretty coop and pen with dirt yard for them to scratch. Bantams, especially Silkies and Cochins, don't need a whole lot of scratching space and are pretty docile in a smaller pen....but they do need some room.

My experiences.
LofMc

Thank you!! I want to do that too...limit their running area to just a certain section of the lawn.

 

[lazy gardener]

Oh that is a good idea. Are you sure the thick layer of grass debris can hide the poop? This would be amazing. Because the smell is my concern. Right now I have to use a rabbit house as a coop and put it on my patio and the poop on the deck attracts flies like crazy so I have been hosing that to the dirt part of the lawn twice a day to prevent the flies from coming in. I even gag when i clean the poop because the smell is too strong for my nose. The smell is just atrocious. And no, the gardener and I do not use pesticides. So the grass is as organic as it can be.

Key to success is ensuring that you have enough room for your birds. How many birds do you have, and what is the size of the coop? Is there a run? (the run is the fence enclosed area that is open to the ground on the bottom, and the coop is the closed in space where they sleep.

The deep litter needs to be made up of more than just grass clippings. Grass clippings are high in nitrogen. So is chicken poop. So you need a mixture of high nitrogen/high carbon materials. If you are using shavings in the coop, that could supply some of your carbon. But shavings don't decompose well. So, I suggest that you add leaves (when available) and perhaps hay or straw, or other such material to balance out the grass and poop.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

It sounds like you do not have anything to dry out and balance the poop and that is why the smell is so strong. I have 79 birds, have not cleaned the poop out of my run since I first got birds two years ago, and it does not smell like poop at all. I do like lazy gardener says and just add in carbon on a regular basis and my run is essentially all compost. Flies will be attracted where ever there is food and water and uncovered poo but there are things you can do to minimize it including not overcrowding the birds, ensuring the poop can dry out quickly, as well as using fly traps. I like the stinky ones that drown them but in a backyard the size of yours you may not like them. Inside my coops I use big sticky traps.

 

[SunHwaKwon]

Oh and the coops you see that are just dirt floors usually did not start that way. They often start out placed on grass and the chickens eat and scratch it all away and that is when they should be adding in the organic material. My run is very large so one of my favorite additives lately is to add a bale of hay every few weeks.

 

[Lady of McCamley]

x2 with Lazy Gardener, you don't want to crowd your birds or you will have poor health and very unhappy birds.

Usual recommendations are 4 sq ft in coop and 10 sq ft in run per large fowl bird, which actually is just enough for holding. They do like to range and scratch, so it can be wise to increase that size if you are not going to let them into the yard.

So with 1500 sq ft of grass, you'd have to portion out something like 50 sq feet for just 3 birds.

That's figuring 30 sq ft of runs for 3 birds, or something like a 5 x 6ft run area, and add to that the coop proper, which would have to have an internal measurement of 12 sq ft, or something like a 3 ft x 4 ft coop....and then consider the actual board dimensions of the total coop and nest boxes.

That's for just 3 birds.

Bantams require less room. Generally only 7.5 sq ft per bird for run area. Coops can be scaled down too.

You can take the math from here.

Good luck.
LofMc

 

[Sheena W.]

I let them free range in the backyard during the day because I dont want their poop to be concentrated in the small rabbit house....but they have been good and stayed mostly in the long but narrow dirt area I have between my patio and lawn..for the bushes. They just stay there the whole day and have not disturbed my lawn fortunately.