Growing vegetables, herbs and fruit at home is clearly a wonderful use of some of your growing spaces. The rewards are many: plentiful and nutritious harvests, saving travel and spending on bought fresh food, and keeping our body and soul fit and healthy.
However, it’s not just food we can grow at home. Keeping and caring for chickens is a great complement to your edible garden system, and while it has been popular in our communities for donkey’s years, we have found that many more people could realise the benefit from adding a few hens to their backyard.
The obvious reward for having a small flock at home is the almost endless supply of delicious eggs. The advantages, though, just begin there. Chickens can assist you to recycle your green waste and food scraps, help keep weeds and problem insects at bay, and can become lovely pets for both kids and adults. Watching chickens roam around the yard while you’re gardening or even just sitting outside with a cup of tea would bring a smile to anyone’s face. Their cute chatter to each other and interaction with other pets really provide that ‘farm’ feel at home.
Now, it’s not quite as simple as popping down to your local chicken supplier and putting a few hens in a small chicken hutch. But at the same time the effort that goes into housing your girls comfortably is greatly outweighed by what you’ll receive in return.
So where to get started. First and foremost, chickens require a safe, dry home. Their night-time space doesn’t need to be huge, just enough space to perch out of the weather and a laying box for their once a day visit. They will require more safe space, though, during the day. The more the better. Providing your girls with a fully enclosed, fox-proof coop will keep them happy and healthy and allow them to enjoy a dust-bath in the soil and hunt around for insects and weed seeds. An extension to this enclosure is what is generally termed a chicken run – a space where they can roam a bit more freely without getting into your garden beds unchecked.
While letting your hens roam freely while you’re in the garden with them is great for them and you, it should be noted that they will want to scratch around. And they are very efficient scratchers! The traditional idea of chooks keeping weeds down around your fruit trees or vegie gardens while fertilising as they go doesn’t really work that well in reality. Any shallow-rooted plants like citrus and many ornamentals/natives can be easily harmed if your hens are allowed too much free time without your attention. So keep an eye on them.
To ‘close the loop’ on your composting requirements is fabulous with a backyard flock. They’ll munch down waste and create nutrient-rich poop that can then be added to your compost, which in turn will feed your plants. All with a little cluck-cluck here and a peck-peck there. Well worth the initial effort and some regular care.
HAPPY GARDENING!
Drew Cooper, Edible Gardens
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