We decided we would put our hens to good use over the weekend. David was doing a spot of weeding (ok, a mammoth day of weeding!) in the fruit cage when he came across an ants nest. Ants are really pesky little creatures. They themselves don’t cause a lot of damage, but they do like to “farm” the aphids, and they do do a lot of damage. So we don’t want any more ants. The hens won’t eat the ants, but they are rather partial to the ant eggs. So we let them out to do a bit of work for us. They did pretty well and ate most of them but their attention span is pretty low and they were soon wandering off in amongst the raspberry canes. As they are very keen on scritch scratching and the raspberry canes are quite shallow rooted, that put an end to the excursion! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could train them to eat just the pests and the weeds. The person who manages that will be a very rich man indeed!
What’s the Minimum Wage for Hens?
Chicken’s Idea of Garden Care
Earlier, Emma posted about the chickens weeding and fertilizing and filed the post under Garden Care…at the time I questioned whether Chickens could ever be categorised under ‘Garden Care’ and as my evidence…here’s what they’ve just done (as thanks) for us puting them on our lawn to enjoy the fresh grass….
If you want to keep chickens, the ideal place for them has fresh grass (and other fresh greenery) and a place for dustbaths (with small stones for them to gobble). If you don’t provide these…then, they’ll make their own dust bath as proven! 
In a few weeks, we’ll move them to their proper spot (which really is a chickentopia), where they have access to both grass and dustbaths and some trees to shelter under…
Chickens have moved
After a few weeks on our veg patch, our chickens were dropping hints that they wanted a change. They’d had their fill of grubs and weeds and were now keen to get back to the grass.
The grass on the lawn needs a bit of a trim, and putting the chickens there will mean that we don’t have to get the mower out just yet. Again, they will manure as they go so that we will have rich green grass in the spring (well, patches of rich green grass!). The veg plot they’ve just vacated will be dug over so that the chicken manure will have time to spread into the soil before we start planting there in April/May.
Chickens Busy Weeding and Fertilizing
Chickens are wonderful. Not only do they produce the most delicious eggs, but they also help with the gardening! Around the beginning of December, we moved our chickens onto our vegetable garden. We managed to find them a patch far enough away from the sprouting broccoli, kale and cabbages (which they would have devoured in a couple of days), but which did contain the remnants of our swiss chard.
We’ve put them on our veg plot because:
- They like eating green things, and we have plenty of those (ie. weeds) on our patch at the moment. They don’t eat thistles and nettles but will have a go at pretty much everything else.
- They’re providing the soil with lots of lovely nitrogen rich manure (and I mean, lots).
- They are getting rid of all the hibernating grubs and caterpillars (which could become pests later on), as they scratch about in the soil.
All this means that the veg plot will be in much better shape come the spring. Thanks girls!
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