Best way to keep chickens out of our garden?

[Chickengene]

How much predator pressure do you have? How much disruption will you tolerate? Find your happy place.

I use 6' fencing to corral the birds and the dogs and the garden. Would love to let them mingle. Some have a high prey drive. I want the garden even if no one else does. I'm also in a neighborhood and deal with those limits. Not by choice at this pointi but it was a good idea at the time. Find your solution. You've gotten some good insight on how others have solved this issue. So find your happy place.

How much predator pressure do you have? How much disruption will you tolerate? Find your happy place.

I use 6' fencing to corral the birds and the dogs and the garden. Would love to let them mingle. Some have a high prey drive. I want the garden even if no one else does. I'm also in a neighborhood and deal with those limits. Not by choice at this point, but it was a good idea at the time. Find your solution. You've gotten some good insight on how others have solved this issue. So find your happy place.

I have really been blessed. I have a three strand "bobwar" fence on three sides and nothing along the front. Have never had any predators exept the occasional scavenger cleaning up after the dogd along the roadway in front. My chickens free-range from, usually just before sun up till they come home to roost. Really blessed because I, due to health reasons and too much to do, have a few times, gone to sleep and didn't close the coop till three or four in the morning. Two of my hen occasionally go outside the wire, but normally everyone stays in the yard. Including the dog, that I wish would leave the yard, and not find his way back.
My next door neighbor has lost dozens of chickens ducks and turkeys to a myriad type of predators.
And yesterday told me about running off a very large healthy looking Red Fox. The first we have ever seen in this area. So I guess I need to get really serious about that automatic door closer.

 

[CardinalB]

Thank you for your suggestions. I am considering re-designing the garden beds/location (it seems like I keep experimenting) so that they can all be enclosed into an area with fencing.

Should I be concerned with flowers?

Yes, i just began letting my chickens out and in the first week they never bothered my garden then all of a sudden I noticed one was pecking at something by a tomato plan. I walked out there and he had eaten big pieces of a tomato which was about half ripe. within a few days they (I only have 4 hens) had eaten on every tomato that had any pink on it then next they pecked holes in some green ones so after they destroyed about a dozen of them I went to Rural Kin, bought wire and put a fence around them and then around my squash as they dug down so deep I was afraid they would ruin the root system. Next they started scratching around my clematis to make a hole to bury themselves half way like a nest. I had deep mulch covering the roots but three of them dug deeper than i felt comfortable with sos I put fencing around two beds today to save my clematis plants, hydrangeas, plus various other flowers. Sad to realize I can either have chickens or I can have fenced everything. They will spend more time in their coop or house than I was allowing. One got inside my new fence this afternoon Good luck in your adventure.