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["Felicia Lowe" <litlbudy@whidbey.net>]

I was just reading some previous posts on geese, ducks and chicken in the orchard and thought I'd share some of our experiences.  We have a 12' perimeter of grass and fruit trees around our garden.  This area is fenced with a 4' chicken wire fence to keep the birds protected and the garden protected from them.  We live in Washington State and wanted to reduced the slug population in garden, hence the ducks.  We have a drake and hen Khaki Campbell and Rouen.  They do a beautiful job on the slugs.  We have 4 female Toulouse geese.  They do a wonderful job of mowing the grass in this area.  We have never had to mow.  They love to eat fruit!!  We keep a 1' fence around the fruit trees to keep them away during fruit season.  They will yank on branches until they get the fruit to drop.  They will also  chew on small branches and debark them.  We have learned to prune the trees to a height the geese can't reach.  There is no damage to tree trunks.  We also have a banty hen (very small Mille Fleur) that is also in the "duck run".  The rooster is in solitary for now.  We don't have any problems with them flying into the trees and damaging the fruit.  We did let all the birds run in the bramble berry area - they ate any berries they could reach and the geese ate the new shoots coming up.  We have blueberries in the garden area.  The chicken flies over the fence and stuffs herself on blueberries.  We had a problem with pear slugs and earwigs in the fruit trees and the birds have eliminated that problem. When the trees aren't fruiting we take the fencing off from around the trees so the birds and scratch and dig bugs.  With a few tree and shrub protections, I would recommend birds in the orchard.  They do a great job of getting rid of bugs, very entertaining and lots of fertilizer.  I'll try to write a more detail of our lessons learned for Pomona.

Felicia - Washington State zone 8