I have a chicken-powered leaf shredding operation for dressing my flower beds and berry patch: I fill a 14 x 3' strip alongside the house with 2 feet of fallen oak leaves and contain the pile with welded wire garden fence. The girls race to it when I let them out in the afternoon and spend most of the rest of the day scratching through and burrowing into the leaves looking for goodies. I sprinkle half a pound of oatseed over the pile, too. They find some of the seed, but a lot of it sifts down and manages to germinate and send up green sprouts--yet another treat! Within two weeks, 4 loads of leaves are reduced in volume to 1 load of leaf bits and chicken poo. My flowers, blueberries, raspberries and chokeberries are gonna be gorgeous next spring!
And I thought I was the only one to put chickens to work lol. When the pine needles and leaves fall off the trees, I let the chickens out into the sides and front yards to "rake" all the pine needles and leaves out away from the house. Then all I have to do is use my lawn tractor with the lawn sweeper hooked up to it and pick up all the leaves. I dont have to manually rake up against the house...my girls already did that for me!
My chickens are keeping the edges of the yard, along the fences, very well groomed. BC, Before Chickens, the weeds always grew higher there, no foot traffic, and it was hard to mow right next to the fence. Now the girls keep all that knocked down as they hunt for bugs and seeds along the fence line. Wonderful!
I put the waste hay/wood shaving and poo from my goats, sheep and chickens straight onto my borders. the chicks are in there everyday, scratching around for bugs, they break it up, turn it over and it works really well. They also like to sit under the bushes there for shade in the afternoons.
We went without a lawn mower for a few weeks and in Southwest Florida that's not a good idea. When we finally cut the weeds I've been going out every day and raking all the stuff together. I'm surrounded by chickens, as soon as they see the rake in my hand, they come running. It's great! They're now helping me with weeding and getting rid of the bugs. I like the "extra" help.
I used to let the hens scratch around in the goat stalls. They would loosen up the packed hay, clean up the spilled grain and eat the fly larvae. They did great outin the horse pasture and run in also, breaking up manure piles and getting the fly larvae. I ave to keep them penned up because of the fox, hawks and neighbors cats and dogs.
