Planting seeds with free range chickens

[angc11]

Hey all! I am wondering if anyone has had any success planting seed (grass seed, cover crop seed) throughout their yard with free ranging chickens.

I have some bare patches of land that I’m trying to plant winter hardy cover crops on like winter rye and crimson clover. I spread the seeds and then put a layer of leaves, straw, etc to cover the bare ground while the seeds germinate. Well I’m sure you can all guess what happens, I just set up the most exciting and fun seed hunting experience for my chickens. They especially go to town on rye. I think they mostly leave the clover alone but we’ll see.

I know it’s probably hopeless without fencing off the area until the seeds establish themselves but I’m trying to re-seed patches over the acre that they forage on so fencing is not practical.

I don’t even know what advice i’m looking for except that I can’t be the only person to experience this conundrum. Maybe looking for certain types of seeds the chickens aren’t into? Or letting them eat all the seeds and get bored with the novelty of the area and try seeding again????

Any advice or sharing of experiences with this type of thing would be much appreciated!!

 

[oldhenlikesdogs]

Same problem here. We just took some plastic snow fence and laid it over the area until the seeds were well established.

Otherwise just leaving the bare patches to slowly fill in by themselves is always an option, especially if you don't mind things other than straight grass.

 

[redinator]

Hey all! I am wondering if anyone has had any success planting seed (grass seed, cover crop seed) throughout their yard with free ranging chickens.

I have some bare patches of land that I’m trying to plant winter hardy cover crops on like winter rye and crimson clover. I spread the seeds and then put a layer of leaves, straw, etc to cover the bare ground while the seeds germinate. Well I’m sure you can all guess what happens, I just set up the most exciting and fun seed hunting experience for my chickens. They especially go to town on rye. I think they mostly leave the clover alone but we’ll see.

I know it’s probably hopeless without fencing off the area until the seeds establish themselves but I’m trying to re-seed patches over the acre that they forage on so fencing is not practical.

I don’t even know what advice i’m looking for except that I can’t be the only person to experience this conundrum. Maybe looking for certain types of seeds the chickens aren’t into? Or letting them eat all the seeds and get bored with the novelty of the area and try seeding again????

Any advice or sharing of experiences with this type of thing would be much appreciated!!

The only thing I can think to do is add landscape timbers on the borders like you would for a garden sections, then put screen over the top to keep chickens from digging them up. You could keep the sections small so the timbers are easy to move to a different section after one starts growing.

 

[Backroadlogic]

Just small patches here and there? Drop cages all around will protect those spots. Big spots, I would just scatter straw, water, and hope for the best lol

Edited for clarity

 

[fldiver97]

Same here ….. any seeds or new plants or seedlings are a chicken magnet. The only thing that works for me is planting in sections with physical barriers and hoping for the best

 

[Perris]

I am wondering if anyone has had any success planting seed (grass seed, cover crop seed) throughout their yard with free ranging chickens.

Any advice or sharing of experiences with this type of thing would be much appreciated

We had a similar challenge here after a water main burst. I covered the reseeded patch with scaffolding netting, weighed down round the perimeter. It lets light and water through, and deters, but does not entirely stop, chickens' attempts to eat grass seed through it. But enough survived to grow and provided OK cover, till the pipe burst again just before Christmas, and now I'm waiting till it warms up enough for the seed to germinate before repeating the process.

 

[Just2chickens]

I do patches that I fence in, I tried the covering with mulch like you did, but chickens always first go for that, makes sense because that is where the bugs hide...
Also had one that scratched my fresh seeded grass seeds from the paths in my vegetable beds...

 

[angc11]

Thank you all for the ideas! Actually netting or something mesh to lay over top is a great idea, I didn’t even think of that. I have snow fence and a few different types of mesh things on hand so I will try some of those and see how it goes.

Also just to note, they decimated all the rye seeds, but completely left the crimson clover seeds alone (for at least 24 hours so far). I’ll try rye again with snow fence and report back here if i happen to remember that i made this thread