How to keep chickens out of garden?

by Dianne Brehaut
(Blackheath NSW)

I do enjoy your newsletters and have just had a good read of the link on pests and recipes for sprays. I have a problem with chooks - my own chooks, which I like to let out in the late afternoon for a wander and a peck about.

Trouble is, instead of wandering in my vast back yard, which is still a bomb site waiting to be turned into a garden, but with lots of lovely potential for foraging hens, they choof off around to the front garden where they love to scratch in my mulch and make a dreadful mess on my paths.

Building protective fences is not really an option for us at this stage, (our property is quite vast and not a fence in sight) and I don't
want to not have them free ranging like this.

Is there a harmless way I could stop chickens from scratching in my garden mulch? If not I guess I will just have to continue restoring order to the front beds each day. Many thanks
Dianne

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How to keep chickens out of garden?

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Jun 01, 2009

Stopping chickens scratching up garden
by: Stacey

Chickens just love to scratch in the ground ... it's very hard to stop them. They feed on slaters and other crawly crusty things.
They need a lot of calcium for egg production, and generally they get this from gritty things. They also need gritty things, little stones and shell bits etc, for their gizzard.
To stop them you can put chicken netting on the ground, firmly pegged down or held down with bricks. But their diet still needs to cater for what they need to lay eggs.

Sep 27, 2011

Wire netting did the trick for our chickens
by: Ali

My husband lets the chooks out of their chicken tractor each afternoon to have a free peck around. They go into the garden and don't seem to do too much damage, so far. They did take a liking to uncovering the potatoes. He placed strips of netting along each side of the plants and covered then with mulch and no problems since.
We always have beds at different stages. So if there is some nice loose dirt they head for that and also get in between the plants and we hope eat any pests that intend to reproduce and
eat our vegies!

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