Chicken Garden

[YonkFarm]

I'm in my first year of raising chickens. When we were getting ready to build our coop/run last summer, I came upon this article about a chicken run/garden:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/silveira44a.html
and so we built our coop with two fenced runs - one on the east and one on the west, with chicken doors on both sides, so they can be in whichever run I choose to let them into. The plan is to have the chickens on one side with the garden on the other side and then in the fall when the garden is done, move them in there to clean it up and fertilize, and just keep moving them from side to side every fall. We built raised beds and are using the square foot gardening method, which includes using a grid to mark off each square foot and making our own soil mix that is very loose and airy and since it never gets walked/stepped on, it stays that way.

Here are some thoughts/questions...
1. Do you think the chickens will compact the soil too much and/or will they scratch all the nice loose soil out trying to dust bathe in it? Would leaving the grids on the boxes possibly help?
2. I'm thinking I could plant fast-growing things (suggestions welcomed) in the SFG boxes in the run where the chickens are each spring/summer and just keep it covered with netting until it's well-established and then remove the barrier, providing them with their own little salad bar javascript:emoticonp('')...so far I have four 4'x4' beds in each run and the run itself is 24'x24'. The "aisles" between the boxes are going to be covered with coarse sand.
3. My other option (which would kind of defeat the purpose of building this dual-purpose run/garden) would be to cover the boxes with plywood covers when the chickens are in there.

Any thoughts and suggestions would be most appreciated!

By the way, I'm in south-central NE!

Thanks for reading....
Brenda

 

[hoodat]

I've tried that and it works great. Be sure to throw anything you would nomally compost in the hen yard. The chickens will do a great job of tearing it up and composting it even if it isn't edible. Yes, they will compact the soil a bit but only for the first few inches. they aren't heavy enough to compact it deeper than that and the tiller handles that nicely.

 

[boggybranch]

I REALLY like this idea. Gonna have to do some pondering.

 

[digitS']

Brenda, I think you and Mr. Silveira are "on to something!"

I'm not too sure about your set-up but the question about chickens scratching up the loose dirt and dumping it on your sand paths - yes, their interest is in digging holes for their dustbaths. If the soil is near the top of the boards, there will be some that gets dumped out.

Sand Hill Preservation (click here) sells a couple of seed mixtures for chickens. I give my chickens all sorts of things from the garden. Lettuce was about their first treat as youngsters but they get most anything. I am surprised how well they finish off mustard family plants and those are part of what Sand Hill sells.

Mr. Silveira doesn't make it clear how many chickens his father kept nor how large the pens were. And, you don't say how many chickens you have. One concern I have is the volume of manure may be too much for the soil/plants to deal with.

Here is something from Robert Plamondon (click here) on pasturing chickens. Scroll down to "2. What's wrong with yarding?"

Plamondon is talking about maintaining a pasture NOT fertilizing a garden. Still, you can see some of the concerns regarding burdening the soil with too much chicken waste.

Some plants would be better able to deal with a lot of chicken fertilizer - those in the mustard family are some of those.

Somebody around here uses this in their signature: "Despite the gardener's best intentions, Nature will improvise. ~ Michael P. Garafalo" You won't be entirely in control with anything having to do with chicken foraging for their food. Still, it is worthwhile to do your best at providing them with healthful, fresh food.

Here is Wishing You Success & Welcome to TEG !

Steve

 

[YonkFarm]

Thank you, everyone, for your replies thus far. Thank you for those links, Steve - I will check those out. We have 12 chickens (10 hens and 2 roos) in an 8' x 12' coop and the 24'x24' run.

I also give the chickens a variety of things - most recently the lettuces and spinach that have gone to seed in the hot weather and the swiss chard that no one in the family likes.

I suppose an option would be to let the chickens clean up the garden in the fall and then cover it for the rest of the winter and the following summer to keep the soil in the boxes as well as not over-fertilize. Maybe I could even get creative with the covers used, rather than just using plywood or something similar.

Brenda

 

[digitS']

Brenda, before I get carried away and go look how much manure a hen generates each year in my Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening and how many pounds should go on a garden (yes, I know it's all in that book ), let me just say that the number of chickens for the pen size looks pretty good to me.

Steve

 

[vfem]

Dirt will be everywhere...when they get to going at it... in return though they will airrate the soil, fertilize the soil and get all the nasty grubs and bugs that were trying to hang out and come back next year! Though my coop does not attach to my fenced garden area, I just bring my girls over into my fenced garden in the fall. 3-4 chickens do a wonderful job enough the rest can free range the yard for the time being.

Just remember the rules about square footage for the chickens you do have and more is always better! (For space AND chickens!LOL)

:Welcome

 

[ducks4you]

I'm gonna be the "negative Nancy" here, and I'm interested in other people's thoughts. I would be concerned about using chicken dung to grow food for my chickens to eat. I clean up after my horses because it keeps their parasite load low. I would NOT want to fertilize my horse's food with horse dung. I don't know specifically what chicken diseases might harbor in the soil of the turnout, but I'd like to move it away from them and let the weather--specifically the sun and wintertime temperatures to "sanitize it". Anybody else? It's a really good question to post on BackYardChickens. (link bottom of page)

 

[fl_deb]

I would be concerned with a lot of mustard family b/c I seem to recall that that family as well as brocoli family have chemicals that are not good in lg qty for the birds. I don't care if someone sells it as a mix for chickens or not, if it isn't good for them why would you risk planting it for them.


Sorry if too strong here it is my fustration of large companies marketing stuff as though it is good for you, when they know darn good and well that it is not- kinda like some of the pharm companies!

 

[digitS']

Sand Hill Preservation can hardly be compared to Big Ag or Big Anything, for that matter.

Farmers have planted annual crops of forage turnips, rape, and other brassicas for generations. Ohio State University, Brassicas for Forage. They have to be reminded that there is some risk, as there is with any forage crop, by the way.

"A diet of pure brassicas can cause livestock to develop haemolytic anaemia and goiter." Mississippi State University, Forage Brassicas

There are potential health problems for livestock with alfalfa, corn, fescue, clover . . . . etc. etc. etc.

Steve