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grammyschicks1031

In the Brooder
Oct 18, 2022
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Hi - my name is Meg. I've been a city dweller most of my life and we've recently bought a 100-year-old farmhouse on 1 1/2 acres about 10 minutes out of town in Highland, Illinois. The property has a huge barn (to my husband's delight) and a chicken coop with a fenced run; the perfect reason to have chickens. We're nearing winter so I thought it best to wait until spring to get the chicks. I've spent the past several weeks clearing and cleaning out the run. I still have to clean out the coop. I've just moved four raised planting beds into the run and found this site while researching the best things to plant for chickens. My grandson and grand nieces are also excited about me having the chicks so I'm planning a "Chicken Pickin" party in the spring so they can each pick out their own chicken for the coop. Since this is my first time having chickens I look forward to any helpful hints.
 
grammyschicks1031 said:
Hi - my name is Meg. I've been a city dweller most of my life and we've recently bought a 100-year-old farmhouse on 1 1/2 acres about 10 minutes out of town in Highland, Illinois. The property has a huge barn (to my husband's delight) and a chicken coop with a fenced run; the perfect reason to have chickens. We're nearing winter so I thought it best to wait until spring to get the chicks. I've spent the past several weeks clearing and cleaning out the run. I still have to clean out the coop. I've just moved four raised planting beds into the run and found this site while researching the best things to plant for chickens. My grandson and grand nieces are also excited about me having the chicks so I'm planning a "Chicken Pickin" party in the spring so they can each pick out their own chicken for the coop. Since this is my first time having chickens I look forward to any helpful hints.
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Welcome to BYC!!
 
Glad to meet you, Meg. Congratulations on that wonderful sounding new farm home.

Your new chickens in the spring will eat up EVERYTHING you grow in their run. That is the sad truth. Go ahead and plant it up with some nice grass and clover and dandelions for them. But move those raised planters back out.

I also had the fantasy of gardening with chickens. But... chickens will eat or destroy any plants they can reach (with the one exception of full grown poke and maybe dock). They even ate down some milkweed plants in their run before I managed to grub them up. BLEAH!

What I do is grow lots of herbs and greens for them in separate areas of my garden and bring those to them. I have seen some folks build an ingenious grazing frame with wire that lets plants grow in parts of the chicken pen, but keeps the chickens from pecking the plants right down to the roots. I haven't tried that yet, but it sounds interesting. 2nd comment on grazing frames.
 

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