Coops and gardens

[HopeSprings]

My garden will be off limits to the flock year -round as I garden right through the winter (thanks to sheets of plastic). I think I'll try netting above the fencing, but carry it out at an angle. Hopefully, that, and a few acres to range, will keep my veggies safe!

 

[TropicalBabies]

Building a new coop and am wondering if the hens will do damage to garden produce if allowed to free range in it.

Ken

Just found these -caught in the act- photos in my travels. While we were expanding their run.
Lettuce, kale, arugula, tomato, broccoli... anything green is their favorite.

 

[PeeWa]

Mine will happily eat whatever they can from the garden, and uproot whatever they don't like, just to spite me.

LOL I thought that was just our chickens.

 

[Spiritsmeadow]

Building a new coop and am wondering if the hens will do damage to garden produce if allowed to free range in it.

Ken

Hi Ken ~ oh yes they will! Chickens love RED...i.e. tomatoes. Mine, the only summer I let them in the garden, decimated my tomatoes. They'll scratch in the lovely soft soil, tearing out your newly sprouted green beans, and they'll "sample" everything. My advice from 20 years of chickens: WHEN your harvest is completed, then you can let them in your garden to clean up what's lying around." Good Luck! Oh, PS: if I have a big grasshopper problem I literally catch grasshoppers and put them in a large plastic bottle, when I have a lot, I put the bottle on the ground and the hens love pecking and killing them as they try to escape. Horrifying, I know, but otherwise the grasshoppers will kill everything in my garden, which I can, dehydrate and freeze...it feeds me all year and I'm not in any mood to share.

 

[Spiritsmeadow]

Mine will happily eat whatever they can from the garden, and uproot whatever they don't like, just to spite me.

HAHAHAHAHA! ME TOO!

 

[HopeSprings]

Hi Ken ~ oh yes they will! Chickens love RED...i.e. tomatoes. Mine, the only summer I let them in the garden, decimated my tomatoes. They'll scratch in the lovely soft soil, tearing out your newly sprouted green beans, and they'll "sample" everything. My advice from 20 years of chickens: WHEN your harvest is completed, then you can let them in your garden to clean up what's lying around." Good Luck! Oh, PS: if I have a big grasshopper problem I literally catch grasshoppers and put them in a large plastic bottle, when I have a lot, I put the bottle on the ground and the hens love pecking and killing them as they try to escape. Horrifying, I know, but otherwise the grasshoppers will kill everything in my garden, which I can, dehydrate and freeze...it feeds me all year and I'm not in any mood to share.

How do you keep them out of your garden?

 

[Rick M]

Mine free range up until the fall when the freaking hawks start coming around again. I have just the short 3 foot tall chicken wire around my garden and they have never jumped over it. I use the yellow electric wire fiberglass poles to support the wire and havent had any issues.

 

[Spiritsmeadow]

How do you keep them out of your garden?

I have a 9 foot tall fence around my garden because I'm infested with mule deer, white tail deer, and wild turkeys. My chickens are free-range and they've got acres to roam around on. Once they know there's heaven in the garden you're doomed! Good Luck!

 

[Spiritsmeadow]

Mine free range up until the fall when the freaking hawks start coming around again. I have just the short 3 foot tall chicken wire around my garden and they have never jumped over it. I use the yellow electric wire fiberglass poles to support the wire and havent had any issues.

 

[Spiritsmeadow]

Rick your chickens are much more well-behaved then mine! Picture a 24" tall rooster, 20 hens all shoulder to shoulder with a tank! HAHA