Losing the garden war with your chickens?

[GldnValleyHens]

Are you losing the war against protecting your garden against your backyard free range chickens?
If you have had anything like I have these past summers, you have chickens taking shortcuts through the garden and trampling your plants in the process, digging huge dirt holes, and breaking stems.
I have come up with a few tips that have helped me keep my chicken garden above thriving. It takes most of the brunt of the destruction.
First, I came up with a common, inexpensive, usually free thing. Sticks. I gathered some twigs, preferably sharp and at least 6 inches, and stuck them in the dirt in a protective circle around my salvia plants that the chickens trampled daily. I also created a wall of sticks in the dirt across the areas they tried to squeeze by. This deterred the chickens from their damaging shortcuts, and looks natural. This isn't soundproof because some like the guinea go through it anyhow, but for smaller chickens it is probably effective.
Second, I also took sections of chicken wire and placed them over the places in my garden where the chickens were taking huge dust baths that were destroying my echinacea plants. If you do this, make sure to make the chicken wire about 3-4" off the ground to keep the chickens from wanting to step on it, prop with more innovative twigs if need be. I like using chicken wire because it blends in well. This is a good idea to protect young plants like zinnias and lavender before they become tall enough to withstand abuse. My chickens crushed and broke a lavender to pieces by taking their shortcuts, and chicken wire helps a lot.
I also plan this year to keep the garden cut off until it has matured enough. I love my gardens and chickens, and despite that fact that chickens tend to totally destroy them, I keep trying!
Anyone else have helpful tips that they have come up with to keep chickens at bay?

 

[lazy gardener]

Deer netting 7' W x 100' long, cut in half yields 200' of fencing. Nearly invisible. Fiberglass fence posts woven through it, with staples to hold it down at bottom, and clothes pins, zip ties, or tensioning it at top by putting top of post through the square to the left and the square to the right of the hole it's supposed to go through.

 

[Stayc]

My chickens especially loved my lettuce, spinach, and collards way to much last summer. I will definitely be implementing these ideas.

 

[CapricornFarm]

I have my garden fenced with 4 foot high garden fencing, green in color. Attached to t posts and a piece of a cattle panel for the gate. I ended up hot wiring it because critters kept going in and eating things. I am hoping to get some 2x4s and more fencing and make it closed in on top. If a build a small coop or move the chicken tractor down there i would like to fence in the raised beds with chicken wire. With hinged areas for access to the beds. I want the chickens to patrol for bugs but not destroy my small plants.
So actually the 26x30 garden would serve as a run for them. I only have 4 pullets ( Speckled Sussex) so a 4x8 tractor would be big enough to house them at night.

 

[Appycowgirl]

I keep my girls in a chicken tractor during garden season. When the sun gets low enough that the roof and nesting boxes of the tractor no longer give shade, I will let them out to forage grasshoppers in the hayfield. (Which is hilarious to watch, BTW) After their fill of giving chase to eat grasshoppers they often go to the woodshed lean-to for dirt baths. I will go to the garden and pick collard greens for them. I will sit on the step of our shop and the girls will crowd me waiting for their turn of greens. Then dusk comes and they roost in the chicken tractor for the night.

 

[HoopyFrood]

The stick barriers are a great idea! I also recently heard of someone doing the same thing with rocks.

We had good luck with a small roll of (I think 14 Gauge) welded wire fence, 4 ft tall. It's rigid enough to be mostly self-standing needing very few step posts. It's light and easily moved around the garden and/or run. You can make a ring enclosure with it or run it between fences... we would simply cordon off parts of their run and garden with that stuff and grow something while they decimated other sections of their garden and run. Occasionally they'd fly over, but not often. Once the crop (we really like buckwheat, oats, field peas) was ready we'd move the fence away ... the chickens moved into the formerly-fenced section and begin to wreak havoc there. While they did that we cordoned off the already-destroyed ground and planted something else there to green the ground back up. Worked quite nicely. We only could grow in it from June through October (last year was our first with chickens)

This year we're planting shrubs and bushes in their garden. I'm also going to try establishing permanent ground cover in parts of their run and garden (we built everything last year and the ground was destroyed from that). I'd like to get creeping thyme and 2-3 different clovers going. I might try some fescues as well. I'm going to try form barriers to keep the girls from eating the cover down to the roots and keep them from scratching. One style will be a wooden lattice type barrier suspended about 3 or 4 inches off the ground. Another style will be a lumber-framed 1/2" hardware cloth screen that sits off the ground about the same height.

The lattice will hopefully keep them out, but it doesn't allow for easy foraging. The screen should allow for easy foraging of what grows through it, but I'm not sure how easy it will be for them to walk on. I might make little chicken pathways on top of it out of flat stones and old boards?

If either work out, I'll let folks know!

 

[SW31]

Ah ha, glad to know it’s not just me. The little blighters think my dahlia bed is the best thing ever for bathing in. Not sure though if the dahlias have survived, I won’t know until May! Yes, I need to give my plants more protection.

 

[mphsgal]

Does anybody grow pumpkins? We want to try growing a couple of giant ones - will my birds eat the plants?

 

[HoopyFrood]

Does anybody grow pumpkins? We want to try growing a couple of giant ones - will my birds eat the plants?

Since you say "giant ones" I assume you mean carving pumpkins? We haven't grown those, but we've grown several other kinds of pumpkins and squash. Once the plants are established I doubt chickens would find them very appealing.

Carving pumpkins themselves are edible (though perhaps not the tastiest or best textured squash). Our chickens LOVE squashes - we haven't found one they don't like. We haven't let chickens loose in the garden when we've had squash on the vine. They readily eat squash if raw if it's split in half and tossed in their run. So I would suspect they'd try to peck at them on the vine... Yet they never eat the rind so I have no idea how safe garden squash would be.

Knowing our chickens, I wouldn't risk it

 

[Perris]

scaffolding netting is relatively inexpensive (c. £25 for 50m) and very light and easy to cut and/or move as required; I use 4' rebars (picked up cheaply at a builder's merchant) to hold it in place. They are easy to push into the ground and move around as required, and fit through the reinforced holes in the edge of the netting, while the netting top edge holes can be just popped on the curved top of the rebar. It comes in several colours, inc green, and also acts as a windbreak, which is a bonus for tender plants or exposed locations.