Can chickens and a garden coexist? Here are steps you can take to ensure your garden stays safe when giving your chickens forage time.
If you are a gardener and are thinking about getting chickens, I can definitely say that having chickens and allowing them some room in the garden to free-range is a rewarding experience for kids and adults alike.
Some people say that you’d be crazy to try to have chickens in your garden. That you must keep the chickens completely segregated from the plantings. The chickens would surely destroy the plants, dig up the soil, and scratch all over creating a mess.
Yes. Unattended chickens could create havoc. But in my experience, with a little patience and positive reinforcement, chickens are smart enough, and completely aware of boundaries if you set those boundaries early and are consistent about enforcement. There are ways to ensure chickens and a garden coexist without heartbreak for you.
Here are a few guidelines which will allow you to give your chickens some free-range time while still maintaining a tidy garden and protecting your plants.
Plant Chicken Friendly Plants
To increase the areas where chickens are allowed to forage, try to plant chicken friendly plants, or super hardy plants. Believe it or not, many established plants dont have much interest for chickens at all. And if they do, they might be interested in a hidden nook underneath the foliage. Maybe they are only trying to escape the heat of the day or just snuggling in.
Some examples of plants which are less likely to appeal to chickens:
- Fast growing perennials which are taller than the chicken (she can’t trample it if it is too tall!). They often just want to sit under the leaves. Examples of flowering plants (such as in a cutting garden) which aren’t bothered by chickens in my garden are iris, rudbeckia, echinacea, valerian, erigeron once established, shasta daisies, hollyhock, daylillies and hydrangea. Also, pretty much any vines which will grow up out of their reach.
- Chicken-safe berries the birds can share with wild birds, such as blueberries, raspberries, grapes. They will also peck any insects off the leaves.
- Succulents – our girls seem to have no interest in most succulents. These include cactus, aloes, echeveria, or agave. However, they will eat small fleshy sedums or crassula varieties, so keep those away.
- Small trees and bushes – these are generally too tall for your girls to bother. However, they are excellent choices for protection. Small fruit trees such as apples and pears provide dappled shade and supplement their diets. They also provide protection from predators overhead. Boxwood, privet, rosemary, mature rose bushes, buddeleia, Italian cypress and arborvitae are all good choices.
Supervise and Establish Chicken Boundaries
Establish the chickens’ boundaries, and pay attention when they are out in the garden. This will save you heartache and give you a better understanding of your birds’ habits. It is also safer for them. How do you establish their boundaries? I have found that our birds are smarter than perhaps we give them credit.
They understand what you want when you shoo them away from an area. After shooing them away from an area three or four times, they get the idea that they should be going somewhere else to play. And of course, your job is to encourage them to go somewhere else which is acceptable to you. You can do this by providing something else which is at least as enticing as the area you want them to steer clear of.
In my garden, I have a row of crocosmia lining the long end of the chicken run. The chickens see those tall orange flowers all day with longing! So when they get out on forage days, naturally they would run over to the row of crocosmia. They are not really looking to eat the flowers, but to hide in the tall grass-like leaves. Toward the end of the season the tall stems are easy for a chicken to trample and contribute to a less-than-tidy walkway.
After a few times shooing them out of that area, they mostly stay away from it now. They have developed new favorite places to hang out, like under the plum tree, in the compost, or behind the valerian, which are perfectly fine with me. They are creatures of habit, so you can encourage the good habits.
Build Forage Space into Your Garden Plan
In order to encourage your chickens to peaceably coexist in your garden, plan your space with foraging in mind. As you think about the needs of the chickens, you obviously need room for your chicken coop, and a run, both of which must be highly secure from predators. In addition to setting aside these areas, plan the area you want to make available for free forage. This can be a garden space just for the chickens or an orchard or other area that allows them to roam. Choose somewhere segregated from your tender vegetables and flower beds if you can.
The forage area does not need to be as secure as the coop and run, because you will be supervising their forage time. You will of course be locking them back into their coop in the evenings. Plan the forage area with your chickens in mind, using more chicken friendly plants mentioned above. You can add some shade protection, a natural water feature for drinking, and non-fussy borders.
But, Limit Forage Time
When you let your chickens out into the garden to forage, do so only when you are able to monitor them. For many people, this would be in the afternoon after collecting eggs. Chickens spend much of the day in their coop and run. This is for their safety more than anything. There are all sorts of predators from raccoons and skunks right up to mountain lions and coyotes. All would view hens as a very tasty meal. (Read my post on securing your chicken coop)
However, having the opportunity to spread their wings and forage for a bit every afternoon is good for them. But if they haven’t laid their egg for the day yet, there is a possibility that the hens could lay their egg out in the garden. Those errant eggs would attract owls, crows, jays, rats, and other unwanted scavengers. This possibility is usually remote if boundaries and nest box routines are already well established.
Also, for the same reason, when your girls do lay in the nest box, try not to leave the eggs in the coop with the coop door open when the girls are out frolicking. Jays and other corvids are very smart birds and will figure out how to get in and out of the coop.
Protect the Most Tender Plants
Lastly, if you can’t separate the chicken friendly forage area from the rest of your plants, in order to avoid any heartache, you should protect your vegetables and other tender plants. Chickens love to eat healthy vegetable greens. They also like to scratch and forage for bugs and take dirt baths in freshly dug soil. To prevent your chickens (and also other critters such as bunnies) from eating your tender veggies, use a tomato cage or other wire cage with a little shade cloth or other visual barrier around it. Usually, just a visual deterrent is enough to keep chickens out.
If you have raised beds like I do, just put some inexpensive, soft flexible bird netting around the entire bed. This will discourage them from taking dirt baths inside your freshly planted raised bed, which is a favorite place for dirt baths!
For your annuals, bulbs or tender flowers, you can use a small cage or a few rocks. When the chickens see a patch of freshly planted bare soil, they like to get their claws in there and dig around looking for protein packed bugs and crickets. You can easily discourage them from clawing around new plants by just putting a few rocks at the base of your newly added plant or bulb. This is only until the plant gets bigger and then you can take the cage and/or rocks away.
When is Chicken Scratching OK?
Some scratching is actually good for your soil – one of the ways chickens and a garden coexist well. For established plants, chicken scratching serves to aerate the soil. On a compost heap, chickens can do wonders turning the material on your behalf. This makes better compost for you, and adds nutrient rich chicken poop into the heap.
Even your vegetable garden can use a little scratching at the end of the season, after the plants are gone. And maybe your chicken will find a potato or two you might have missed, like Blanca did in the picture below!!. And the chicken poop is great for the soil too!!
There are my tips for allowing chickens and a garden coexist. Have I forgotten anything? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below.
