Invading Neighbors Garden

[saysfaa]

... You don't think that if we discourage or fence them for awhile, they'll forget about it???

nope, not for long anyway.

I worked pretty darn hard to discourage mine from going past the house. Or, at the very least, not into the road. I had great success for a while. Then moderate success. Then it was nearly a constant job. This despite a big garden, a huge compost pile, a different dirt pile, a field, a woods, another patch of woods all in the back and only a pretty sterile and very open lawn in front.

 

[BettyD]

Wow, that sounds like us, we are adding mulch to all of our gardens and creating new mulch gardens.
We no longer let them free-range all day. When we're ready to go outside and sit with them, we let them out. (We are retired) Sometimes it's only an hour and sometimes it several hours. When we're out with them, they seem to stick around. Also, we keep an eye out for them heading that direction. So far, so good but it is a commitment.

 

[SamLockwood]

I had a similar problem on my 16 acres with my mixed flock of chickens and guineas. They'd wander into neighboring properties or try to get into the nearby public road.

I ended up fencing in about 5 acres to keep them contained and keep ground predators out. 5' high 2x4 wire fence on T posts is pretty cheap to put up of you don't mind a couple days worth of manual labor. I used an 8'x3' chain link gate for my driveway access and added the 2x4 wire to it to discourage the birds roosting on it and potentially escaping that way.

It's not the prettiest fence but it's actually better at keeping them contained because they can't stand on top of it and it's a bit too high for them to fly over it. I also keep trees and shrubs trimmed about 2 feet on either side of the fence.