Chickens are one of my favourite additions to my vegetable plot. Not only do they provide beautiful free range, golden yolk eggs, their happy cluck-clucking as I work in the garden keeps me company and makes my heart smile.
And that is not where their usefulness stops either.
As diggers of soil and hunters of worms they come into their own area of speciality! These days I never go to the effort to dig over a vegetable bed when it is finished, I just set the chickens up in their own little temporary day run on top of the vegetable garden and let them scratch and kick and dig and peck – which is what they love to do and they do it so well.
Chickens will scratch everywhere!
I do have to take care to exclude them from areas where I don’t want them to dig. Given half a chance they will either jump the temporary netting or find that little hole in the wire and find something even more delicious looking where you don’t want them!
During the day I put the dogs outside to keep an eye on them, and should one of the chooks escape the dogs will naturally round them up (they are border collies – born and bred to round things up!) and give me a bark to let me know that something is not as it should be.
At night I have to lock my chickens up to protect them from nightlife such as foxes and other wild predators, but the next morning they are released again onto the veggie patch. After 3-4 days their work is obvious, and aside from having aerated and dug over the bed, it is now well fertilised and ready to go for the next crop.
Water for your Chickens
If you are considering using them for this, make sure you add a bowl of water or an aerial waterer to the area. Because they are so vigorously kicking over the bed they are likely to throw some soil into their drinking water so you will need to keep you eye on it and may need to refresh it a couple of times a day while they are out there. More often in summer when the weather is warmer and the days are longer.
Access to Shade
Also make sure they have some access to shade on warm days. Setting up a temporary shade sail or rigging up some old lace curtains near where they are working will provide them with adequate shade for the heat of the day. I wrote about more ways to keep chooks cool on hot days here.
Protection from Predators
If you live in an area known for predators make sure the temporary fence is strong and robust, or better still, electrified. The last think you want is for your workers to become someone else’s lunch!
When they are not busy digging over my veggie beds, I let them lose in the compost heap – they will give it the same treatment there and the compost will come along in leaps and bounds as they add their own special brand of fertiliser to it. They will happily dig through that, turning, pooping and scratching for bugs all day! Again, make sure they have access to shade, water and are well protected from potential predators.
Our chooks’ main yard is fenced around part of our orchard, so when they are not on a special digging and de-bugging missions, they are working over the orchard. As our trees are fairly small, each tree has a protective ring of wire staked around them. That way the chooks can’t get too close and ring bark the tree, but they can wander around, picking up bugs and pests, increasing their protein intake and keeping the soil well manured.
Chooks love the work when they get to do it, so don’t feel bad about putting them to work in your garden – it lets the chickens express their chicken-ness!
If you are starting to prepare your veggie beds for the next season, consider putting the girls to work – they will be thankful and you will save yourself a lot of time and energy.
If you still need convincing that chickens are the ultimate backyard companions, then have a look at my top 6 reasons for keeping chickens.
And what better company to have as you potter around pulling weeds and planning your next move in the garden.
