Keep Chickens!: Tending Small Flocks in Cities, Suburbs and Other Small Spaces Read Online Free PDF Page A

may want to fence off — permanently or temporarily — anything you don’t want crushed, dug up, or eaten. Or you can plant a garden resilient to chickens, such as a hardy, drought-resistant lawn bordered by evergreen arborvitaes, spiny conifers, and some rocks. (I’m exaggerating, but you get the idea.)
    About pesticides — I no longer use them. I don’t need to, because the Girls get the bugs. And because the Girls eat the bugs, I don’t use pesticides; the chemicals might harm them. Chickens pick at and taste everything. So if you use pesticides or lawn or flower fertilizer in the garden, keep your hens in the coop for a few days afterward until the chemical additives have been absorbed or thoroughly washed away.
Top-Notch Fertilizer
    Whoever thought I’d be singing the praises of chicken poop? I am, and I’m not the only one. Chickens are walking nitrogen-rich manure bins. The Girls’ manure is the envy of my gardening friends. When I fluff up the Girls’ coop, I take the generous deposits of chicken guano and straw from beneath their sleeping perch and put it right in the compost bin. I store my leftover guano straw in extra trash cans that my friends line up for and haul away for their own compost bins. Nitrogen is an essential ingredient in great compost, and chickens are just full of it!
    In the winter, I throw the guano-laced straw right on top of the fallow vegetable gardens. Then I let the Girls out into the yard, and they beeline right for the vegetable patches, where they spend glorious hours searching for bugs in the soft soil and digging the compost materials deep into the dirt.
    Some chicken keepers put their flock in a small mobile pen to create a movable compost bin. They move the pen in the yard every few weeks, bringing it to areas where the soil needs to be worked and amended. The chickens till their own nitrogen-rich guano into the soil of the pen, fertilizing the land directly under their living quarters. These types of pens are best suited to larger yards that can accommodate a roving 3' x 4' x 2' (91 x 122 x 61 cm) structure.
    Chickens are natural partners in a complete home recycling program. Since I’ve had chickens, no leftover fruits, vegetables, or breads go to waste. Instead, the Girls get it all, which delights them from the tops of their rough combs to the tips of their sharp toes. Besides, all those lovely, fibrous scraps just make them poop more, which gives me more guano to go in the compost bin. Feeding kitchen scraps and leftovers to a flock of city chickens is a win-win event.
    Your chickens will gladly take over pest patrol in your garden.
    Chicken manure is a potent fertilizer.
Chickens in the Garden
    Chickens are beautiful. Chickens are fun. Chickens are also a bit rambunctious. Left to run unattended in your garden, gentle hens take on the demeanor of roadhouse thugs. They break blossoms. They crush tender shoots. They pull up baby lettuce and lay siege to unsuspecting squash seedlings. They don’t mean to; they’re just a band of happy, clumsy hens.
    When I first started keeping chickens, I’d let them out of their coop and into my garden. I’d watch them a bit, then go back into the house. Two hours later, I’d go back outside and wonder where my garden went. Left behind was a landscape of freshly dug and scattered soil, several shallow holes, and rootballs and rhizomes laid bare, vulnerable and drying up on the sunny topsoil. While I appreciated how thoroughly the chickens had aerated my garden, I was disappointed not to have any plant life remaining that could have benefited from their efforts.
    I quickly realized that my hens became hoodlums when left unpenned and unattended. Still, I wanted to enjoy watching them browse through my garden on occasion without sacrificing years of nurtured foliage. I wanted them to keep eating all those delicious bugs, too, so I came up with a couple of ideas.
    The first part of the plan was to limit the time the Girls had to