[curries]

Like you I loved the idea of my chickens having a free run of the garden, but after a couple of months of poo all over the patio, mud all over the paths and all my pretty plants dug up (my mother told me so!!), I decided enough was enough and fenced them off a large area of the garden.  It was originally grass but once it became bare soil I had a load of wood chips delivered and it copes pretty well. 

I have just dug the other side of my garden up to make a veggie plot and i now have a lovely big pile of turf from which I chuck a few chunks in every day and they love that.  When they were first shut in the looked at my garden longingly for a while but they have forgotten about it now 

I'm afraid free ranging and beautiful gardens don't go together 

[ChristyRose]

WOW!!  I love the views from your garden Curries.  Lucky thing!!  I love all you replies - they made me laugh    The things we do for our chickens!!  I have been letting them out for a bit each day - mainly when I'm working out there so I can watch them.  I do have a few shrubs etc so they cant do much harm to them.  Its just when they start digging a hole and yes they have made a few dust baths under the tree....  and the poo and mud on the paths....   

[Dominic]

Really, the best bet is a mobile run.

My run is about 12sqm, with 4 chooks.
If I move the run every 4-6 weeks, the area is wrecked, but bounces back in 4 weeks, if I leave it 8-12 weeks, its wrecked, and hasnt bounced back in over 12 weeks.

They do get out to free range, and I'm noticing the common areas are starting to struggle.

[andreadon]

Ours havea smallish run (minimum size really), but we let them out into the garden every day for a couple of hours when we get home.

We thought it would get rid of our lawn (saves mowing, as someone sid earlier), but what's actually happened is that they stick to throwing the border soil all over the path, and scratching only at the grass to the front of the run door. All the grass behind the run door is untouche. and we've had to mow it and everything!! 

[ChristyRose]

My girls (13 of them) have quite a large run - 8m x 8m - thats 64 sqm ?   They have pecked it bare though!!  They've been out all day and I've just been out there to give them their corn and they've been put back in 'their' garden.  Theres poo everywhere!!     But I think they've had a good day sunbathing on the lawn 

[Derculees]

Hi Christyrose, as a new member I'm running thro all the mail (eventually)
to be educated in chic management. As a treat for my little foursome I walk
them thro to the front garden with a few 'tuk tuk' sounds, in my best falsetto voice,
they follow me remarkably well even to the point of running. the reason being, the front
garden has raised beds of heathers shrubs and trees, I was going to suggest heathers
to you as they can stand up to the feathered marauders and have winter, spring,
summer and autumn blooming times, providing the soil is not alkaline.
Just thought I'd mention it while passing.

[gibbo]

Ive just started to let my girls out for a monitered half an hour or so to have a peck around on the lawn.  Their pen had become very muddy and scratched over the first year of having them so i have sectioned it off and re-seeded half of it.  Thus ive given in and let them wonder a little.  I am always pressent to give them a little gentle telling of when they start to do naughty things.  My neighbours laugh at me as i use a long pea stick as a herding crook for chickens, a little tap on the floor near them and they move on and if needs be a little tickle of the bottom feathers prooves very effective!

[FeralSuz]

I have come to realise that no matter how many books I have read on the subject of keeping chickens, that 'garden demolition' was never mentioned. I had to laugh at some of the posters who have nicknames for their flocks. hee hee!

I find I have a feeling of deja-vu here, and this in reference to when I gave birth to my son. When he started walking, and pulling himself up onto things, I had to make a conscious decision to change the environment a bit to accommodate him, but also so that I could still enjoy it.

With chickens, it seems to be very much the same thing. I am an avid gardener, and will grow anything. On my patio, I have now put any flowering plants and ferns up on windowsills or in tiered hanging plant pot holders. My strawberries (in pots) are now sitting on a higher table that they seem to have no interest in getting onto. The larger potted shrubs stay where they are, as the chooks don't seem to want them. (Therefore, raise tender flowering and fruiting plants to wall mounted hangers, windowsills and shelves if you can.)

As for my herb garden: well, that died an untimely death. :{ A good day's work and quite a bit of money in the herb collection, so not too pleased about that.) They tend to dig their dust holes in between the plants and then proceed to cover the plants in a mound of earth, eventually trampling them to get back into their holes. I have had to admit defeat on the herb patch for now, as I cannot afford materials for that at this point (and don't have my Dad handy to help me build the fence around it). So I did the next best thing and hoiked all the herbs out, put them into planting boxes that now sit on my kitchen windowsills. 

The lawn seems to be getting the most benefit...I haven't had to mow it the whole summer and it has never looked greener (well, at least the parts of it I can see that are not covered in chicken poo. lol!) Can't be a bad thing, right? They have also scratched up every weed in the borders (as well as some flowering annuals), but my worst nightmare is the fact that quite a few areas of the garden have been laid to gravel. And lordy lord, they love scratching in that! :{ It gets everywhere.

Our last job will be to fence off part of the garden because I am having trouble keeping up with their digging. Impossible now to just 'get rid of' because I love them too much. The whole family agree that they have brightened our lives with their personalities and antics. Just wish they weren't quite so destructive. :} 

[outercircle]

I have developed a sort of phased approach over the two years I've had my hens so as to preserve my garden but allow the hens to free range. I had this fantasy of lovely hens wandering through my herbs and cottage garden flowers but I quickly realised that they will wreck everything - if they don't actually eat it, they'll scratch it to bits looking for slugs.

They have a generous fox proof and rat proof run (and probably rhino proof due to my husband's habit of over engineering everything) and an automatic door on their house so they can get out as early as they like in the summer but also be safe at night if I'm out after dark.

I work from home a lot so when I'm there, they have the run of carefully selected bits of the garden. At the moment, they are digging over my raised beds for me now that all the summer veg is over. Anything still growing such as leeks are tightly covered with fine netting which also keeps out onion fly.

During the summer, the beds are fenced off and they have access to a large fruit cage of raspberries and blackcurrants - they eat a few low growing berries but most are well out of chicken reach. I'll be keeping them out of the fruit cage after Christmas so that it can recover and the new shoots on the bushes can grow. Come May/June when the courgettes etc are in, the beds will be fenced off again and the fruit cage opened up. They like the shadiness under the fruit in hot weather.

I've made moveable fence panels from very cheap garden trellis from Poundstretcher edged with even cheaper timber battens that actually look quite nice. They can easily be picked up and moved around into different arrangements when different bits need fencing off and are held up with wooden stakes and garden twine.