Help! My Chickens Eat Everything!!!!

[Happy Chicken Mama]

Hello All Gardeners!

My Husband & I have nine sweet... adorable... wonderful... friendly... spoiled chicken monsters! The lovely little buggars love (love is too small a word... It is their supreme joy) to eat all of our attempts to vegetable garden. We have decided to fence (white picket) in an area to garden because they eat everything. How do we keep them from going in without fencing in the top???

Our three Arracaunas (Otherwise known as the 'flower-bed digger-upper', 'I can't believe you jus ate $50 dollars worth of @$%*&-ing snapdragons that I planted yesterday & 'I hope that flower was good that I see haning out your mouth because I had it shipped from Japan and it won't &%$@-ing bloom for another five years & thanks for not letting me at least see it before you ate it'!) fly clear over our seven foot privacy fence so I am quite sure that there is no fence high enough.

Needless to say, I have turned our yard and home into a bit of a Martha cottage and I am afraid that veggies in a large cage just wont go with our current dcor

The area that we are sectioning off is about 6 feet by 75 feet with short raised beds.

Does anyone have any ideas how we can have our eggs and tomatoes too???

Help! Thanks!!!

 

[patandchickens]

I don't suppose you'd be willing to fence *in* the *chickens? You could still throw them plenty of green growing yummies, and let them free-range when the garden is done for the year?

Pat

 

[patandchickens]

p.s. 'fruit cages' (a caged enclosure for fruit trees and berry bushes) are a traditional part of English garden design, so there is certainly established precedent for caging the garden...

Pat

 

[chickhamm]

you know you could do a nice white row of collums down the center of the garden conected with a 8 foot 2x4, dress it up a bit and drap bird netting or chicken wire from side to side and would still look nice but still protect your garden.

chickhamm
Theressa
GA

 

[Tutter]

How old are the hens? You could clip their wings (feathers.), and if they are not at their full weight, that will help with their flying abilities, especially with less feathers for lift. Then a fence around the vegetables may work....

Have you considered a chicken tractor?

I think, past those, unless someone can think of something else, it's either contain the veggies, or the chickens.

I have 3 of the same breed, and I keep the little darlings in a chicken yard, unless supervised, because they can do more plant damage, and in a shorter period of time, than any 10 other hens of my other breeds! Who says they aren't made for survival?

 

[Beekissed]

I also free range but I had to make a choice....the new garden plants or the chickens. Needless to say, they are now in a very large run until the garden gets a little bigger. When everything is big and producing, I plan to let them out for bug patrol. My delicate flowers will have a chicken wire hoop house over them at that time. Really, from a distance, you can't see chicken wire. My dogs were finding the mulch hay a very comfy place to nap....in my raised beds! I put stakes and 2 rows of twine at 6 in. intervals and I haven't seen a dog in the beds all day! I was expecting to see a potato sprout out of a dog any day!

Clip those wings and contain....very hard to have your cake and eat it too!

 

[Mossy Rock]

We fence in our gardens and the chickens haven't gone inside yet, when we are not gardening we leave the gate open so they can dust bathe, as I till the soil they gobble up the worns and stractch around. The fence is only approximately 4 feet high so if they wanted to go inside it would be no problem for them.

 

[silkiechicken]

I fence in the garden and if I catch one inside, they get a very stern look and know they are in trouble, start panicking and run down every plant on the inside edge fencing trying to get out.

My fences are only about 3 feet high and usually if one gets in, it's because I didn't close the door very well. Thing is though, I make sure they have fun stuff outside the garden to eat and play in.

 

[Kindergardener]

That's what our chickens do, too! I got my impatiens half planted over the weekend. Every time our chickens go in the garden with evil intentions I shout NO,NO!! and shoo them out. I know they know they're not supposed to go in there. I went in the house for something in the middle of planting over the weekend. When I looked out the window I could see our rooster sheltering something and looking furtive, while standing at the edge of the garden. I got suspicious and walked out...he cackled a warning and he and the hen, who he'd been sheltering while she DUG UP MY FlOWERS ambled away. Then I tenderly planted my new morning glory seedlings. Haha, the chickens went down the row of seedlings and ate EVERY ONE!!! (they looked sorta like worms....) Last year we started a rock garden in order to discourage them from digging around our newly planted plants; and this does help. And I've noticed that, eventually, ours will leave our plants alone, once the freshly dug dirt has sort of dried and looks more normal. I think they're mainly after worms and other goodies disturbed by overturning the earth, though they'll eat the flowers and young plants, too, of course. Ours have not (yet) bothered our tomatoes or peppers. And ours don't bother our larger flowering plants; just the small ones. So maybe they learn? Or just get full of other stuff.

 

[Franciee]

I use the vinyl fencing around garden, trees,flowers. And allow the chickens out for about 2 hours before it gets dark. This way they still keep my yard pretty bug free and don't have time to destroy before they run back to there pen. Hope this helps.