Market Farming

[Leigh Hauter <lh AT pressroom.com>]

Title: Re: [Market-farming] Free Range Chickens in the Garden

> >  
> > Does anyone have any experience with using chickens within
> > your growing spaces?
> >  Any insight would be greatly
> > appreciated.
> >  
> > I have ranged laying hens during the winter months in my
> > market garden for years.  They do a nice job cleaning up unpicked
> > and spoiled tomatoes left on the vines and helping to incorporate
> > garden residue into the soil. I'm not fussing about anything they
> > leave behind in exchange.  How else can you get paid eggs and
> > meat for having manure spread on your fields?  I keep them
> > enclosed in electronet fence in order to keep them out of the
> > overwintering spinach, onions, and garlic patches or from unmulching
> > the strawberries.  When spring comes and I'm back into serious
> > planting then out to the pastures they go.

this sounds pretty much like our practice too.  The electronet along with a Pyrenees does a great job on keeping away our over abundant predator population too.