How to keep the grass in my run...

[Farmerboy16]

Quote:

I free range my laying hens, and the area around the hen "mansion"there is not a speck of greenery, except a honeysuckle bush that I planted. They love the berries, and the shade it provides, plus it adds a nice green color in place of the grass.

 

[Teeah3612]

Yay Chicks! :

There's a thread on here somewhere that shows a coop with raised planter boxes in the run. Grass is planted in the boxes with chicken wire over the top. The chickens can then hop up onto the boxes and eat the end of the tall grass as it grows through the wire without scratching it up with their feet. The rest of the run is left alone so that they can scratch and be chickens, take dust baths etc. Wish I knew how to find that thread...it's pretty cool.

I saw the one you are talking about it was pretty neat. I think it said something about a salad bar for the chickens. Look around, I am sure you can find it.​

 

[ChooksinChoppers]

A better idea is build a raised type bed (not filled to the top with soil) plant grass seed and cover that with wire. The chickens can only pick out the bits that grow up out of the wire. As we only have a small coop/run area we have planted several 3ft rectangle pots/planters covered with wire and will rotate them.

 

[harleyjo]

I would like to see that thread too!

 

[desman]

You can go to search and look up grass in run. The heading is grass in run it works the persons name is arianna go to view my BYC page really nice setup

 

[Yay Chicks!]

Well, the pics are gone from the thread, but here is arianna's home page that has the pics... https://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=67374

 

[citychickx6]

I was wondering around here and WOW thanks. That link is very cool. Fresh greens and no mud!

 

[Keltara]

Thanks everyone for your wonderful input. I found a link after all your help of arianna's grass in the coop. I think we my try it! If you go the the following thread and scroll down to the 5th posting. It's Arianna's chicken PALACE and there are several photos of the grass boxes.

https://www.backyardchickens.com/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=6165216