Help with Growing Plants in Run?

[DotTheHen]

So the way my chicken area is set up, is that I converted an old dog yard into a chicken run. The run is behind my garage (the garage is separate from the house), so I built a large indoor coop inside the garage, and connected the coop to the run by sawing through the plywood. The chickens have a little ramp to go inside, and they have a good amount of outside space.

One problem though, the run is heavily shaded, and any grass that grows is scratched up by the girls. It looks kinda disheveled with it just being dirt, and I was wondering if anyone has any tips for sprucing up their run.

*They do have supervised free range in the afternoon, so they DO get grasses and seeds and bugs in their diets!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

It is near impossible to keep grass in a chicken run unless it's extremely large. You are best putting down organic matter, mulch, sand or even gravel. They are easier to maintain.

 

[DotTheHen]

I'll have to try those! Thanks!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

I do a deep litter system in my run with grass clippings, leaves, hay, mulch, weeds pulled from the garden and anything else I can come up with. The soil turns into a soft loan that birds like to dig in and it drains well.

If your run is smaller you may prefer to pick dropping up on a regular basis so sand or gravel is good for that type of maintenance.

 

[DotTheHen]

I have all of those materials available, so I'll have to see what I can come up with! Thank you!

 

[Lizzy733]

My run was doing quite well until the last of my girls went into lay and then they totally up-ended the grassier portions of it (mostly clover and dandelion), but there were a few things that stuck around from all my planting.

Larger bushier plants do well, like lavender and pineapple sage. We've just recently added some black currant and raspberry bushes too. We have two grapes planted and are training them up the fence, but climbing roses would do as well. Sunflowers are ignored once they grow tall enough and make for tasty treats later on.

You can protect seedlings or younger plants with cloches and grow frames, which are easy enough to make with some spare hardware cloth. You can also keep them off your plant roots by mulching with large stones, broken terracotta or scoria. They also seem to leave small poly-tunnels alone, so those can be implemented to shelter new plants as well.

Please note that the cloches will protect edible plants from destruction, but anything that grows through the cloche will be fair game come chicken feeding time, so make sure to be generous with the cloche size if you want larger plants. We have lemon balm, orange balm, chamomile and valerian all planted out in cloches.

You could also go the potted route and grow\establish edible plants outside the run and cycle them in for the girls as treats and for a splash of color.
Our run is in shade for the earlier half of the day, but does get quite a lot of sun from mid afternoon.

 

[DotTheHen]

Oh wow thank you! I'll have to see if raspberry bushed could grow!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Oh wow thank you! I'll have to see if raspberry bushed could grow!

I would avoid raspberry plants as those thorns could cause bumble foot if a bird stepped on one hard.

 

[DotTheHen]

Oh yeah that might be dangerous...