Tired of destroyed landscaping. You are BANNED from free ranging!!!

[DanEP]

I have 15 acres that they can roam but have learned that their favorite place to poop is the porch I just power washed And if I'm ate with the boss in the evenings they will come up and peck on the door (see avitar) while pooping on the other porch.

 

[Barry Natchitoches]

Quote:
Dutchie,


You don't have to give up a backyard veggie garden if you have chickens!!!!!


I have chickens and a very successful (and large) vegetable garden too.


Here's how you do it:


You build small, on the spot, hoop tunnels out of 50 foot reels of thick wire (I buy mine from Lowe's), cut the right size to go over your garden bed.

For my four foot wide and 50 foot long beds, cutting the wire into strips about six feet long seems to do it, and I just poke the wire strips in the soil at the edge of the bed so that it creates a wire arch over the bed about 2 feet high.

I place the wire arches about 5 to 7 feet apart from one another all along the 50 foot row.

Then after the wire arches are in place, I take a sheet of 10 foot wide by 50 foot long piece of remay (aka "floating row cover") and hang the remay sheet on top of the arches. I just use 8 foot strips of cheap 2" by 4" lumber that I buy from Lowe's to weight the sides of the tunnel cover down. It's quick, convenient, and the lumber can always be used for another purpose later if need be.

Some people dig a shallow trench on one side of the garden bed (3 inches down is all that is necessary), and then put that side's remay edge in the trench, lining the small trench with remay. Then they take the soil they just dug out of the little trench and fill the trench back in -- thus giving the row cover a very firm "weighting down" on that side that simply will not allow wind to get under it.

Limited amounts of both rain and air will get through remay coverings, which makes remay the ideal material to cover your veggie garden with. As an added bonus, it will give you weather protection, thus allowing you several more weeks a year to grow veggies at both the early (spring) end and also the late (autumn) end of the growing season.

Do keep in mind that you will have to uncover ONE SIDE of the tunnel from time to time in order to water, or weed, or harvest your garden. This is why people who use trenching to weight down their remay do so on one side only.

Personally, I weight down my remay material with 2 by 4 lumber on both sides, and that way, I can choose which side I want to open when it is time to water, weed or harvest, based on what direction the wind is blowing.


This method of growing was actually developed by northern gardeners who wanted to extend their growing seasons.

But it works quite well for people who have free range chickens to contend with as well.


One note: If you live in the south (like I do), you need to make sure that you get the thinner type of remay that they market as "insect barrier" remay. That is because the thicker sheets of remay are designed for those northern folks who are trying to warm their garden beds -- not for us southerners who are interested in just keeping little scratchers out of the veggie beds. But they do market a thinner remay for gardeners who want to use remay blankets to keep flying insects like the cabbage butterfly or the squash bug out of their cabbage or squash/pumpkin/melon plants.


I use this method for all but the crops I grow vertically (tomatoes, raspberries), and it works great!


As for the tomatoes, I am sure you already know that if you grow them vertically in tomato cages you will get a heavier and healthier crop.

But as an added bonus, that method also keeps most of your tomatoes out of the reach of your chickens. With chickens, I make sure that I choose varieties that will grow tall in the air when properly caged. If you need help identifying those varieties, PM me, and I'll help you figure out what you can use. Or perhaps better yet -- call your local agricultural extension office, and ask them what indeterminate tomatoes grow tall and healthy (when properly caged) in your area.


Another thing -- you might want to actually plant the chickens a small garden of their very own well away from your garden.

What would a chicken want in her garden?

Well, first of all, plenty of fast growing greens, replenished frequently because they will eat them when they are small. Any cheap wheat seed, rye, or turnip greens do well in my area for that purpose. You might find something that works better in your area.

As has already been mentioned, chickens like to scratch in the mulch, so put alot of loose mulch in their garden.

One thing a friend of mine does is get pine cones, smear them with peanut butter, and then roll them in bird seed. Then she hangs them off a "clothes line" that spans across her chicken's garden just a little bit higher than the height of the chickens. The hens love to peck away at those pine cones, to get the seeds off of them.

And make sure that there is a waterer in or near their garden -- but elevated on concrete blocks or something so they don't kick too much dirt into it.


Anyway, these are some of the things you can do in order to have both a veggie garden AND chickens.



Oh, one more thing I forgot to mention:

Little tomato transplants can be housed under remay hoop tunnels for just a few weeks at most. After that, they will be growing too tall to stay under that two foot tall tunnel.

But that IS the perfect time to put the cages around the tomatoes anyway. I use homemade cages that I built out of 5 foot by 150 foot stretches of concrete reinforcement wire. I cut the wire into 6 foot long strips, then use a wire cutter to "bend" hooks in one side and then hook the two sides together to create five foot tall cylindars that can then be buried six inches into the ground around the tomato plants, and used to cage the tomatoes. I bury the cage six inches into the ground to keep it steady during wind storms.


Thing is, the remay hoop tunnel will protect the tomatoes from the chickens when they are very young, and the concrete reinforcement wire cage protects them from the chickens when the plants get bigger.

 

[Barry Natchitoches]

Quote:
Cypress mulch is pretty smelly stuff.

Perhaps they don't like the smell of cypress, especially as low to the ground as their "sniffers" are, compared to our own.

 

[70monte]

This is the reason my chickens no longer free range. My fiancee's grandmother lives next door and my finacee's house is on a small lot of land on her grandmother's farm and the chickens were destroying her flower beds, getting in the garden, as well as dustbathing right next to her house. She finally told us to pen the chickens up or else. I almost got rid of the chickens then because I don't like to pen chickens up but decided not to for now. Maybe one day.

Wayne