One of the reasons that we have chickens is to have them fertilize the garden and help eat the harmful bugs (especially their larvae, grubs, etc.). However, given that we’re not even great at training dogs, the concept of training chickens not to destroy plants in the garden or the flowerbeds is beyond us. So, we have to rotate the two ‘crops’ through the same space, but at different times. The plan we’ve arrived at is still a work-in-progress, but I’m pretty happy with the outcome. I think you can get the idea from the drawing and photo below.
The garden is about seventy feet by forty feet, divided into quarters with a 6′x6′ chicken coop in the middle. There is one main entrance to the garden, and three short stretches of permanent fence (each with a gate). Finally, at any given time, there is usually one temporary fence made of 4-foot chicken wire on T-posts. Right now, temporary fence ‘A’ is up and we’re gardening in everywhere but the bottom left quadrant (marked by dashed lines) which now belongs to the chickens. And although the coop has four ‘chicken doors’ (one on each wall), at the moment three of them are screwed closed and they enter and exit via the one indicated by the dashes.
The point is that we have unlimited access to most of the garden, while the chickens have access to the coop and the main exit (for afternoon free-range forage time) without either interfering with the other. We don’t have to worry about chickens in the bean patch, and we don’t have to dodge them with wheelbarrows of mulch, etc. But, when we’re ready to rotate, we simply change which door of the coop we let them out the next morning. (And twice a year we change the indicated ‘temporary fence’.)
It’s designed such that by using one of the two temporary fences, we can garden (or leave fallow) three-quarters of the space, yet regardless of which quarter the birds are in, they can be allowed in and out for foraging. Needless to say. when we turn them back into a section that we’ve been gardening, they ‘attack’ the newspaper and straw mulched beds and paths looking for bugs, worms, grubs, etc.
Here is this morning’s view from outside the main gate. The chickens are sharing their space with the asparagus, which provides shade.
Like I said, it’s a work-in-progress, but seems to be a keeper.
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Gardening, Meat, Eggs, etc.
Very interesting read. I wish I had the location to experiment with the same set-up.
Hi There,
I came to the same conclusion after getting the chickens to control sow bugs which were devouring my S. CAL garden area. However, as happy as I was about the chickens, and it took years of begging for my husband to say yes to them, they in turn ate every bite of every piece of anything in the garden. I decided to convert part of it to a dwarf orchard just to claim some space back, but they decided that digging the trees out by the roots was their next move. So, now there are bricks stacked around the bases to keep them out. I am amazed at how industrious they are in getting in the little fenced in area. Needless to say, all the articles that I did read about chickens in the garden did not mention that they ate everything besides the bugs.
Love your political links. The left coast is going to sell us down the river in Nov.
Trying to get more self-sufficient in the suburbs.
Nancy
1 acre in Escondido, 30 mins north of San Diego
Thanks for the link to over here…great set up you have! I need to go and see if I can adapt something like this to my garden! Kim
Just wandered onto the site, and I really like your setup. Are you still using it as is, or have you tweaked it in the past couple of years. How many chickens do you usually have? Does the electric fence work pretty well to keep out predators?
Pretty much. The rotation system works very well and we’ve improved on the predator-proof coop door (described elsewhere in this blog) by including a photocell operated switch for the door, only powering it up after dark and shutting down at daylight.