Chickens and vegetable gardens ok?

[Kassaundra]

Quote:
Trees are pretty save, flowers are pretty tasty!

 

[LiLRedCV]

Here's a story on the chicken moat mentioned earlier:

Mother Earth News: Construct a Chicken Moat for Effective Garden Pest Control

 

[rancher hicks]

What they don't eat they will dig up to dust in. If you don't have enough twigs do what I did stop where folks have put out branches and take them home and use them. I have two foot chicken wire behind the twigs.

 

[itsmechrissy]

Quote:
My chickens love to dig up the mulch in my flower garden, I'm constantly putting it back in place. Fortunatley they didnt' discover my veggie garden til most of the veggies were harvested, I suspect that next year I will have to get the fence all the others are talking about

 

[Fierlin1182]

Flowers... well, we don't have any flowers so I wouldn't know! But trees are definitely fine. We've got a row of small palm trees next to the garage, and this is a favourite spot for the daily dust bath. The trees are healthy and well.

 

[chickmashnoon]

First year having chickens and have not fenced in the garden yet, but they did roll on my flower beds and managed to dig up all my daffodil bulbs with their dustbathing. They also hang out on the porch on windy days and poop all over it.

looking into fencing for the garden.

 

[Martha80]

Perhaps the amount of property that the birds are allowed to free-range over makes a difference. My chicks have several acres to explore so they rarely even notice the vegetable and flower gardens. They wander through, scratch a little and then move on. I don't think I lost any produce (or flowers)

 

[Summer98]

Where the coop is located right now, they would have access to a flower garden and a pumpkin patch. Since I can't fence in the pumpkin patch, I am having second thoughts. I'm thinking what I may need to do is have a fenced run for them to be in when I'm not home and weekends and evenings they can free-range under my supervision. It might be best to have them in a fenced run when I'm at work because lately the neighbor's two black labs having been getting loose and coming onto our farm

I was not impressed when this happened (my cats ran up trees and my sheep jumped a fence and huddled together in fear). Do you think it would help if I provided a box with sand/dirt for dust bathing, so that they wouldn't need to dust bathe in the pumpkins?

 

[fowlsessed]

Quote:
Dogs will devastate a flock, one by one or all together one day. I've seen it happen, and it's terrible they would leave some chickens alive, but with torn open backs and leave the bewilldered owners to do the killing

. So, you will want to shoot the dogs, talk with the owners or fence the chickens in( I hate to see chickens penned when they have room all around to roam). and they will use the dust box, but that wont stop them from dust bathing in the pumpkin patch either.