Three Ways Chickens Help Your Garden

The first-time chick owner has visions of a flock ambling freely about the backyard or homestead, in tranquil harmony with nature.  Then reality (in the form of full grown chickens) arrives to shatter that lovely image.  Chickens’ quirky habits cause a wide range of problems, which can make it difficult to fully free range them. They will leave feces tie-dye across the back porch, they’ll scatter freshly spread mulch across the yard, and they’ll dig out new plants wherever they find them. But with a bit of clever redirection, these same habits can be turned to great benefit. The chickens’ defecating, scratching, and pecking are all useful tools in a fruitful garden. 

Here are three simple ways that chickens can help your garden:

1. Chickens Make Great Compost

If you put old grass clippings, leaves, or vegetable scraps in a shallow pile in your chicken pen, the chickens will scratch around in the pile. This scratching will keep airflow on the decomposing material and speed the composting process. Instead of using a pitchfork to turn your compost pile by hand, you can let your chickens do it for you. 

Not only that, chicken manure is excellent fertilizer. To use the manure, use wood shavings, straw, or other organic material for bedding in your coop. When you clean out the coop, you can either mound the soiled bedding as its own compost pile, or you can add the chicken manure to your existing compost pile. After allowing the manure and bedding to decompose for a year, you will have nutrient-rich gardening gold to mix into your soil. 

2. Chickens Eat Pests and Weeds

Chickens will help control any insect from cucumber beetles and cabbage worms to ticks and mosquitoes; and they love dandelions, plantain, clover, and many other common weeds. When letting your chickens into your garden, surround any reachable plants and fruit with chicken wire to keep them from enjoying your produce. If you want the chickens to help with a pest or weed problem in a particular location, encircle that area with chicken wire and only allow the chickens in that area. They will munch off most green weeds and they’ll voraciously hunt down many insects. Even keeping a chicken tractor close to your garden will help keep the bugs at bay.

3. Chickens Prepare the Soil

In the gardening offseasons, when your garden isn’t full of vegetables, your chickens can improve the soil by scratching which loosens the ground for planting. Chickens will also eat weed seeds, insects and grubs which hide in the soil during cold months. They will turn these nuisances into great fertilizer. If you have a fence around your garden, letting your chickens free-range in there is easy. A chicken tractor is another great way to move them around your garden in the offseasons. If you don’t have a fence or a chicken tractor, you could make a temporary fence with chicken wire. Whatever way you do it, letting your chickens in your garden during the offseason can be of significant benefit.

With these few tips, you will discover the gardening potential hidden in your chicken. Instead of pooping on your porch, she’ll be fertilizing your garden. Instead of scattering your mulch, she’ll be turning your compost. Instead of ripping out your young plants, she’ll be gobbling up weeds and bugs. Sometimes tranquil harmony with nature needs a bit of help from humans.  Give the birds some guidance and their pesky habits can be transformed into key factors in your gardening success.