Keeping the girls from devouring the garden

[just3girls]

Hi! I'm pondering this year's garden and this is the first year that we're starting the growing season with full-grown, free-ranging chickens. I appreciate all the droppings they've deposited all over the garden, and I love how they've kept weeds to a minimum with all that scratching they do. HOWEVER, we will never have a garden this year if I can't figure out how to keep them from chomping the seeds and tender seedlings I plant.

I've essentially given them half the yard by putting up a 4-foot tall chicken wire fence down the middle. But they clear it no problem, apparently by flying over. Surely folks have been combining veggie gardening and chicken keeping for centuries. But HOW? Any ideas?

 

[KristyHall]

Quote:
Clip the feathers on one wing. by the time the new feathers grow in for them to fly over the wire, your tender seedlings should be old enough to withstand a little rough chicken justice. That's what i do.

 

[Fred's Hens]

Six foot fence. Chickens and deer. I grow commercially.

 

[Carols Clucks]

While not the best looking thing......

years ago my dad picked up every 8-12" diameter pvc pipe he could find on construction sites. He cut them to about 6" and we use to set around seedlings.

We also have vintage folding dairy crates that we turn over the top of the pvc ring and then of course, our fence around the garden.

Usually, that combo does the trick, but I have been saving window screen to clothes pin to the metal crate should we need too.

We have one hen that can get in to anything (wings clipped or not) I am going to try adding some mylar streamers in a few of her favorite places to see if they bother her enough not to try them.

Oddly, that hen stays in the yard with only a 4' fence around the property, guess she likes it at home and the grass is not greener.

 

[just3girls]

Great! Thanks for the ideas!

 

[CoyoteMagic]

6ft fences, razor wire top, intruder detectors just to name a few things!! I lost 3 yes T-H-R-E-E!! gardens to the girls last year!! This year the chickens are being fenced in!! Tractors for all of them!!

 

[PhoenixAngel429]

Quote:
All I can say is put a bigger fence around it and keep your tomatoes away. Chickens LOVE tomatoes.