If you have chickens or you’re thinking about having a container garden, or you have a container garden and thinking about getting chickens, keep these ideas in mind.
Try to proved other food sources to keep the chickens busy elsewhere. Sprouting cereal grains in a shallow pan is a popular option.
Chicken wire is your best friend. A simple sheet of chicken wire around a small plant will provide a barrier. To give the wire structure, you can use a tomato cage or a couple of stakes. Hardware cloth is a lot sturdier than chicken wire, and can easily be cut and shaped to size. Or you can get serious with bricks and large stones. An aggressive chicken can scratch smaller stones out of the way, but a ring of bricks or larger stones around the base of a plant can help. This method is especially important in newly planted containers, because the chickens love nothing better than to scratch the loose soil out of a pot. Also, you can get plants just for your chickens. Shrubs are a fantastic choice because they provides food and shelter for your chickens.
At my household we came up with our own way to keep our chickens out of our flower pots. We place bamboo skewers throughout the flower pots. It seems to repel the chickens. I wasn’t sure it would work. Our chickens would go up to them and act like they are going to peck the leaves, but when they saw the skewers and they bolted! I’m glad we came up with that idea, or else our pretty flowers would be gone.
Story and Photos by Molly Clegg, HS Intern
