Should chickens be kept out of vegatable gardens?

[possumqueen]

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I'm not sure if I can make it any clearer.

Poop = great fertilizer
But...also...in addition to that...poop = potential source of pathogens.

ergo...no poop allowed within 120 days of harvest.

It's not a question of whether it's "organic" or not. It's a matter of poop is poop.

So you're saying FRESH poop is a potential source of pathogens. Composted poop -- PROPERLY composted poop -- is okay.

But either way, fresh or composted, it seems to me that it would make sense to have everything in the garden bed BEFORE the plants went in anyway to give them a good start and have all their nutrients at their roots where they need them.

 

[BoerneChickens]

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I'm not sure if I can make it any clearer.

Poop = great fertilizer
But...also...in addition to that...poop = potential source of pathogens.

ergo...no poop allowed within 120 days of harvest.

It's not a question of whether it's "organic" or not. It's a matter of poop is poop.

So you're saying FRESH poop is a potential source of pathogens. Composted poop -- PROPERLY composted poop -- is okay.

But either way, fresh or composted, it seems to me that it would make sense to have everything in the garden bed BEFORE the plants went in anyway to give them a good start and have all their nutrients at their roots where they need them.

This makes sense to me - it looks like I have some additional fencing to figure out!

 

[comp6512]

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I planted "little gardens" in the chicken area, and used 2foot bamboo sticks with deer netting with much success. Chickens cannot hop on the netting because it's not a solid landing surface. Go for it!

 

[BoerneChickens]

I planted "little gardens" in the chicken area, and used 2foot bamboo sticks with deer netting with much success. Chickens cannot hop on the netting because it's not a solid landing surface. Go for it!

Good idea!​

 

[fasbendera]

My chickens eat anything they can reach and that includes jumping up to get a tomato. They each any soft skinned squash, scratched my pole beans to death after pulling them off the trellis and you get the general idea. Love the chickens and my garden they just don't play well together but it could be a learned behavior and one tried and now they all do. Before I fenced the garden it was the first place the went.

 

[newchickmom]

We compost our chicken poop with the horse manure at least 3 months (we rotate compost bins), then it gets tilled in the garden during the first till. The garden gets tilled agoin right before we plant.

Also, chickens in garden = NO tomatoes. They head straight for them as soon as they start turning red.

 

[linmar]

This is a great topic.

I have been admonished by the CO State extension service to compost the chix poops--maybe 6 months. That seems like a long time and seems to demand a military discipline that I cannot abide.

This is what I plan to do:

concentrated poops from the coop go into the composter or into the flower places. We can remove the flower plot soil to the garden plots next year. Poops that have already happened, or that may happen, in the veggie plots will just be there, and we will be the experimental animals. All our chix eat only organic, grass-fed scraps, and we eat their eggs! I do not want to tempt fate, but it seems too silly to bar them completely, or for 6 months, from a food-growing area. If one can be very careful about what goes into a chicken, can't one have some confidence that "good stuff in; good stuff out?"

In addition to the option of digging in poops in non-veggie areas and later transferring the amended soil, there is the so-called poop-tea. In this case, one uses poop and water to make a liquid that can be used on the lawn, etc. I plan to put the remaining solids into the non-veggie soil for 6 months and then move it to veggie plots. I suggest you all read the part of Omnivore's Dilemna that reports on the VA farmer who rotates cows, chickens on his farm. His is a time and labor intensive process, but I think we can all adopt something like his process to have an organic and WHOLE system/process.

I believe that nothing we do with our chickens and their products can be as toxic as what the industrial food complex serves up to the American people.

To Possumqueen: I think the spinach e coli in CA was due to runoff from a cattle feedlot. So try to do grass-fed.

Lin in Colorado

 

[Ga Chicken Mom]

Er...we all have e. coli in our gut and need it to properly digest food. There are strains of e. coli which cause disease - I believe e.coli 157 is one - and are the culprits in contaminated beef and veggie products. I really think that the bacteria we are often exposed to is part of our natural environment and usually will not hurt us. A weakened immune system, very old or very young people are the exceptions. Factory chickens, feed lot cattle and confinement pigs are fed antibiotics to try to maintain some level of well being while the animals are raised in horrid conditions and fed unnatural foods. Bacteria become immune to the antibiotics and levels of bacteria are much higher in confinement raised animals. My husband was in India for several weeks, he tried to be very careful about what he ate and drank. He came home and was very ill for a month - couldn't get too far from the bathroom and lost about 30 lbs. He had cultures done and the results were e. coli. The bacteria was never identified more specifically. Obviously he ingested a strain of e. coli that was foreign to him. I say wash hands, be careful about handling food and enjoy poop raised veggies. They are more healthy than factory farmed produce grown on chemicals.

 

[Chicky Tocks]

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LOL! True. True. Last year every single tomatoe that was within a hen's jump got a peck hole.

 

[BoerneChickens]

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Read it and saw Food Inc which also visits the Salatin farm. I am wondering if some vriation of that may work even in my small yard. If I have three beds - two in production for my household and one that is planted just for the chickens (legumes and things that add nutrients to the soil and to the chickens) - if I build a moveable "day run" for them over the "chicken bed" and then at the end of that planting season, til that bed and move the run to the next garden? I need to figure out how to make that work logistically but it seems like it should be feasible to accomplish something similar to the whole system that was described.

I am getting great ideas from everyone's feedback - thank you so much for all your insight and thoughtful ideas!