Free Ranging Hens - Destructive Little Buggers!

The idea of Free Ranging chickens is great in an idea world. But in the real world, in a small to medium garden, it’s a recipe for a disaster coated in chicken poo and big holes.

Chickens love to scratch, forage and dig nice big holes to have dust baths. But they’re definitely not picky about where they do it! When we moved into our new house back in December, obviously nothing much was growing so we let the chickens roam about most of the time rather than being cooped up in their temporary home (The Aviary) all day long, which was driving them nuts.

This was great for a few weeks, but it didn’t take long for 99% of the garden to end up bathed in chicken poo and for large holes to start appearing in what were once flower beds and nice tidy borders. Their foraging and constant scratching, which is what a chicken is programmed to do has now resulted in widespread carnage throughout our garden, and now that Spring is here, there’s a constant battle between chicken & nature is the daffodils try to make it all the way to blooming before they’re decapitated by a ravenous Big Bird!

So after much thought, this has now resulted in us planning to build a much larger coop and run for them to inhabit for the majority of the time. As much as we like our chickens to be free ranging, it’s going to be impossible for them to be 100% free range AND grow fruit and veg at the same time. When we have a bigger plot (the small holding we’ve always dreamed of) maybe they can be totally free range. Until then… there’s a new home planned for our girls around Easter!