Explore unique and different Uses of Chickens in the Garden that will help you in growing plants and keeping your yard in a good shape!
These useful Uses of Chickens in the Garden can help you in a lot of ways to maintain your yard! We have included the best ones!
Check out some amazing used of Charcoal in the Garden here
Uses of Chickens in the Garden
1. Composting
Oxygen is a necessity for compost to disintegrate. The more air it gets, the faster it forms. Compost turning is a time-consuming task, but the good news is that chickens can help you out!
Obviously, they won’t disperse the entire pile but they will sure disassemble a good portion of it, so all you have to do is heat up the remaining fraction of the pile.
2. Efficient Waste Disposal
Chickens do a stellar job at waste disposal! As they are omnivores, they can munch on practically any food scrap. That means you can feed them all kinds of leftovers instead of tossing them into your garden and affecting the quality of the soil in the process.
Secondly, do keep in mind that what goes in comes out, so giving your chickens a good diet will ultimately supply lots of fertilizer to your garden in the form of chicken poop. Adding chicken manure to the garden soil will boost up the growth and health of your plants.
3. Weeding Without Chemicals
With chickens, you have got the most natural and risk-free weedicide ever. While tilling your garden bed in early spring, just let the chickens pluck off the weeds and their seeds.
4. Garden Cleanup
Another great way to repurpose your chickens is to get them to polish your garden bed by eating up any plant or vegetable scraps leftover at the end of the harvest season. It’s a nice way to treat your chickens while lowering your work burden in the process.
Gradually, they will defecate and add compost to the soil, thereby enriching its quality.
5. Eggs!
An indirect way of using chickens in the garden is to let them breed and lay eggs. The eggshells of chickens are an excellent source of calcium and perfect for fertilizing permaculture gardens.
Have a look at some awesome eggshell uses in the garden here
6. Chicken Tractor
Just place a portable coop on the soil between successive rows of plants. A mobile coop helps your chickens run around while tilling the soil in the process. Maybe that’s why it’s called a mobile tractor!
A video here is all about building simple chicken tractor from scratch.
7. As Spreaders of Mulch
Chickens can spread out piles of organic mulch quicker than you think. If you want to avoid the tedious task of spreading mulch or compost, just pile up the material in the desired location and keep your chickens around it. Your work will be done in 3-4 days flat.
8. Orchard Pest Control
De-bugging trees is as easy for chickens as eating pizza is for humans. Seasonal insects don’t just reduce fruit production but also hamper the quality of the harvest.
The best way out is to let the chickens loose during early spring because that’s when the worms get all active and ready to lay their eggs.
You can unleash the flock again in autumn to clean up the remnants of fallen fruits that the insects may use as houses during winter.
9. As Lawn-Mowers
Chickens are a natural at lawn mowing. They instinctively know that grass is good for their system and don’t mind chewing away at it all day.
You can always let them loose on a messy lawn only to find it all tidied up in a day or two. Sure, you may have to trim a little for a nice finish but that’s no big deal.
10. Soil Aeration
For a well-tilled garden bed that has just enough aeration to nourish your saplings without choking them, then all you need is a bunch of chickens.
Just sprinkle some chicken feed over the chosen location and get them started. All that scratching, pecking and tugging will eventually disintegrate the soil clumps and allow proper mixing of the topsoil layer with mulch.
