Replanting grass before chicken tractor makes its rounds again

[Moonshine Farms]

Hi guys, I could use some advice. Hope this is the best place to put this question We have a chicken tractor for three birds. This is our first coop. The birds quickly ate all the grass/green living things (in slightly less than 2 weeks) and we moved the tractor. They have regular feed that we feed them but we also give them left over salad greens, watermelon, etc. but they seem to love the grass. So when they ate it all we moved the tractor. I realize if we keep doing this at this rate our back yard will be a muddy bald patch in no time. Especially since there is limited area we can move them right now in the back yard but we hope within a year to have the back yard changed and have a privacy fence up and allow them to be free roaming and put up in the hen house at night.

Anyway- My question is- I have no idea what I can plant that will be fast growing so I can keep moving the tractor around in our few available places and give them grass to amuse themselves with. Any gardeners out there who can suggest something to throw down? Parts of the yard is good soil and others god awful hard clay if it makes any difference.

Or- should I just give up on the idea of replanting the grass and moving the tractor? I had no idea the grass would be destroyed like that lol. I wish our whole land was fenced and we could just let them go- they'd be our lawn mowers... or we'd have a big muddy pit lol!

Thanks!!

 

[Jaxon4141]

I move my chickens on to grass when they are finished in the garden. I let them scratch and dig for about a week and then move them. I rake and ruff up the soil, over seed with grass and water until the grass sprouts. You end up with a nice stand of grass after awhile. During the summer it is a littler harder to get grass seed to sprout without doing a pre-sprout of the seeds. But if you don't care what type of grass you have you can always use annual grasses like rye, fox-tail millet or oats. In the garden I use yellow mustard, hairy vetch, fox-tail millet, rye, purslane, buckwheat, clover and any other ground cover that they can eat.

 

[Moonshine Farms]

Thank you! This is exactly what I needed I don't care what type. Love the suggestions Going to check out getting 1 or two of those tomorrow.

 

[Kikiriki]

The ideal situation for a tractor is to move it every day. If it is too hard to move that often, consider making a more portable day pen. You dont actually want to let them eat and scratch until the grass is gone. Even though you may get seeds to sprout the root systems take a while to get established and you wind up having a big area that requires watering on a daily basis. Without the grass in the summer, the ground gets really hot and drys out more quickly, and it allows weeds to get established because they are hardier than grass. The dry spot can also cause the surrounding grass to die back because it gets so hot and dry.

I have been fighting with a dead spot from my dogs...it started years ago and ended up with a quarter of my backyard a sand pit. Year after year Ive tried to fix it, and it just kept getting bigger! I seeded and it all died. I sodded and it all died. I treated the soil and seeded and it all died. I finally dug out the grass that always sprouts in the plant beds where it is unwanted but is protected and transplanted it to the edges of the bare soil. Every week I did it, making the circle a little smaller. Then I seeded with a regular grass and it is still alive so far, but I still have lots of bald spots out there where the seed got washed away or eaten by ants. I have to wait to find a bag of seed on sale, and then I seed some more!

Trust me! You really want to protect the grass you have! Please let my sandpit nightmare convince you!