We'd love to let the chickens free range in the yard, but they have a tendency to muck up our landscaping and scatter mulch all over the place. They'll also poop all over the porch and deck. I'd love to find something that would work like a scarecrow to keep them out of my landscaping and off the porch. Until that happens, we've found an alternative that works pretty well. We're calling this 'Controlled Free Ranging', although that may be an oxymoron.?.?
Hubz has lots of miscellaneous t-posts for use in the garden and around the place so we put them to use with some temporary fencing, sometimes called snow fence. It's made of a durable plastic that we tie to the fence posts with baling twine. Once they've started to make their mark on a certain area we'll move it around to keep the yard healthy and give them a continual supply of new bugs and grass.
We put them on the garden last fall and left them on it until mid-January. Not only did they clean it up for us, they added a few months' worth of manure. :) They also got plenty of leftover veg to eat. They LOVE tomatoes and there were plenty on the ground for them to enjoy.
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| Our garden last fall - 'pre chickens' |
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| Our garden today |
The temporary fence is about 4 feet high so it does a good job keeping them enclosed during the day. We've had a few rogue birds hop over it, but we put a stop to that with a little 'haircut'. Occasionally, the wind will loosen it from the posts, but overall, it's been very sturdy.
Overall, this has been a win-win for us and the birds. It's not too expensive and can be used over and over again, the chickens get to free range which means healthier eggs, healthier birds and a lower feed bill; AND, the garden gets fertilized and cleaned up. Sounds like a good deal to me!
I can't wait to see how well the garden does with all that chicken manure!
I have to keep my chickens confined most of the time, and allow them out to range only when I am home because of predators. Also, like you, the chickens can be pretty destructive with the landscaping. This does mean I do a lot of shoveling manure certain times of the year, but the manure is great for the gardens! It looks like your chickens have been an immense aid to a productive garden. It will be interesting to see follow-up posts on your chickens & garden.
ReplyDeleteThanks for stopping by Kathy! We did have an incident with a predator. We believe it was a hawk and he got one of our young pullets while she was out in this temporary run. That was a sad day, but on the whole we're pretty satisfied with this method of somewhat controlled free ranging.
ReplyDeleteWe had the same problem with our chickens. We had one that laid right on the back porch sofa. I miss that but not the flies that chicken poo brings. We are fencing off the back 2 acres for them to free range now. I love your blog. Thanks for sharing! www.sewgrown.blogspot.com
ReplyDeleteWe don’t have chickens yet, they’re coming this summer; but we plan to do something similar for them. We live on an acreage and to let them free range might not be a good idea. Thank you for sharing this at the HomeAcre Hop! Look forward to seeing you again tomorrow morning: http://blackfoxhomestead.com/the-homeacre-hop/
ReplyDeletehi there, here's a tip that worked well for us. buy a bale of hay, break it up and scatter it around the pen. the hay has grass seeds in it and the chickens will love scratching around in it. it will also help the pen from not being so muddy. we also brought 2 foot chicken wire to keep them out of flower and off of things. it looks rather good in a country setting
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