Question about Round-up and chickens.

[DerbyChook]

At what point is it safe to allow chickens to range in an area that has been sprayed with Round-up? We had some bamboo and other invasive plants dug out of our yard. The landscaping company is coming around every few weeks to spray the area with Round-up to get rid of anything they missed with manual digging. My chickens usually range in my backyard most of the day. At what point is it safe to let them out again? The Round-up people say one hour, but that is probably more for cats and dogs, not pets who actually eat the greenery that has been sprayed.

 

[Siler]

I would hesitate to let them in that area until next year, but I'm not sure. I would try to find alternative "green" ways of killing plants now that you have chickens. My mother recently told me that when she was little(she was raised on a working farm)they used bleach to kill off weeds/poison ivy/other invasive plants. Now that I have chickens free-ranging in my yard I've started using bleach in the water gardens(where the chickens drink) instead of algaecide and mosquito killer. It's just enough to kill the algae and mosquitoes and will evaporate in 24hrs. I just block it off for a day and give buckets of water to the girls. I had to stop using Preen(my favorite way to prevent weeds in the flower gardens) and have to put down a thicker layer of mulch plus hardware cloth to prevent them from digging to take a dust bath. I also dug a hole in the yard and keep the soil loose so they will bathe in that instead of the flower beds. No more poisons of any kinds to kill bugs on trees. I use a Japanese Beetle trap now instead.

Hopefully someone here can say for sure if it your area of yard will be safe again.

 

[DerbyChook]

Normally I use only natural weed killers, mostly a good mulch and an old fashioned weeding fork, but the bamboo is sooooo invasive, it is nearly impossible to kill with normal methods. It was spreading from the patch the people before me planted into the entire garden so I needed to take action. I have some stakes and poultry cloth. I may just partition the area off until we get the problem under control.