Chickens and the Garden, a symbionic relationship

We have chickens.

I know you know that, I've talked about them enough.

But these chickens are free range chickens, which means they can roam anywhere within our fence line that they so choose. You might even classify them as "backyard chickens" since we live in a suburban area (on a piece of property that time has forgotten in an old agricultural zone, but I digress.)

Several months ago, I read an article that talked about the benefits of having chickens and gardens and in this article as well as in some of the comments that were made, these people swore that you can let your chickens into your garden to roam around and aerate the soil, picking up bugs and slugs. And oh! while they're in there they can fertilize the garden for you!

Wow! Chickens are awesome and great for a garden.

"But wait!" you say,"Don't chickens EAT garden foods?" Well these people say that you really don't have to worry about that, at most all you'll see is maybe a few holes in a couple of the lettuce leaves - no big deal.

Well, I'm not really sure what kind of chickens these folks are referring to but I'm here to tell you MY chickens LOVE tomato plant leaves. And pepper plant leaves. And lettuce. And beet tops. And pea plants.

Sigh. So now I have to figure out how to protect my garden plants from these destructive pests.

Side note: Yes, I know it's November and it seems crazy that I have plants that still need to be planted in the garden, but these are cold weather plants and I live in Florida - the cold weather is only just starting to think about showing up around here, so yes, am just NOW planting my fall garden. It'll be fun to see if it works, don't you think?

Back to the purpose of this post:

I've got these planting trays with my fall seedlings in them, growing wonderful little plants and I swear I have tried to keep them out of reach of the chickens, but they are pretty persistent creatures.

I planted them in the seed trays instead of directly into the garden with the full intention of planting them when they were "big enough" to not be attractive to chickens. This supposedly is when they are no longer seedlings or when they get to be about 6-8 inches high. From what I had read, chickens really liked newly dug soil and would search out and destroy seeds and seedlings, but grown plants just didn't interest them.

Well, not quite. The tomato plant is almost 3 feet high and there is not a leaf left on it. The pepper plant had a baby pepper on it - HAD is the operative word here.

So...what to do? How am I going to protect my plants from total destruction?

Old Head rounded up some 1x2x8's and some chicken wire and we designed a few "seedling cages". Basically these are long boxes, about 2 feet tall and 3 feet wide built out of 1x2 framing. Then he wrapped three sides with poultry wire. These 3-sided cages will sit down over the plants and protect them from the chickens as well as other rodents and possibly even rabbits. If they can't get in, they won't be able to destroy the plants. For the larger plants, he is using garden fencing to surround a few sections, then we will run fencing along the top of the section to box in the plants.

What's that? "Fence them in" you say? Chickens can't fly?

Yup. I've heard that too but no, fencing doesn't work for these chickens. We are lucky to be able to keep them in our yard with the 6 foot fencing that surrounds the property. The two and four foot fences that we have to keep Beau the dog out of certain areas only serves to give them something to sit on while crowing and preening.

So seedling cages it is. They will help protect the plants from being eaten by chickens, rabbits and other pests. Plus we've decided that they might prove helpful as the winter progresses. On nights when it is supposed to freeze, we can drape a blanket over the cage and protect the beet tops, peas and lettuce, which might just allow a few extra weeks of salad fixin's.

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