Humble Garden

ReSkilling for future food independence

Hard working Chickens

Posted by Nika On June - 16 - 2009

Humble Garden 2009: temporary chicken pen on raised bed

Chickens are always busy looking for something to eat. I love putting them to work in the garden, you just have to be careful how you do it.

You cant put little leashes on them, you have to put them in a tractor (like you see below). I put them in the tractor so that they can eat clover and make delicious eggs.

Humble Garden 2009: chicken tractor on clover

I am putting some other chickens to work by putting a temporary tractor on one of the beds where I have pulled out bolted lettuce and want to get rid of grubs and other excess bugs.

Humble Garden 2009: temporary chicken pen on raised bed

The chickens also scratch up the ground, sunbathe in the soil, taking dirt baths (to clear out any bugs in their feathers) and they also fertilize the garden a bit.

Humble Garden 2009: pecking and scratching

At the end of the day, the boy rooster, Barley, will go back to the chicken house and the girls will go to the pastured chicken tractor.

Humble Garden 2009: Barley the fierce rooster

Humble Garden 2009: chickens cleaning garden

Here you can see our asparagus bed (that has started to slow down) mulched with hay. Asparagus likes to live with tomatoes, thats what you see growing there.

Humble Garden 2009: mulches asparagus bed with tomatoes

Here is another couple of shots of our milking Lamancha does and then some of our other goats and llama.

Humble Garden 2009: momma goats

Humble Garden 2009: forest creatures

2 Responses to “Hard working Chickens”

  1. I love your chicken tractor that fits on top of your raised beds. Fabulous idea!

  2. Nika says:

    Thnx! Actually, the chicken tractor per se is much larger and seen in one of the above shots (blue tarp on top) – its a large square.

    This pup tent structure is meant for climbing plants like beans and peas! It works perfectly for this purpose too :-)

    Thnx for writing!

    Sorry it took so long to reply, our ISP cut us off and then WP didnt email me to tell me you had left a comment :-(

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About Me

We are a family of 5, including Nika, Ed, Q (14), KD (7), and Baby Oh (4). We garden 1024 square feet of raised beds plus assorted permacultural plantings. We also have 13 LaMancha dairy goats, 40 chickens, and one guard llama.

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