Having Chickens in the Garden
Yep, we’ve got chickens!
After setting up our vegetable plots and trellises, we decided to raise some chickens to help us in our permaculture garden.
The photo on the right is our first chicken family in September and now Mama Hen is already with her new set of cute little chicks.
So how do chickens help us in the garden?
They help with composting. We let them scratch and poop on our compost heap.
Our chickens are free-range and once we see them gathering on top of a heap, we distribute the compost to areas where we want the chickens to further break the compost down. This is usually where we want to put a new garden bed or in a separate enclosure.
The chickens basically turn our compost piles. And although it takes longer than usual, we seldom turn the piles these days so it’s less work and we also get additional nutrients from their poop.
They keep insects in check. I once saw Wina, our hen, running across the garden very fast following something in the air – a funny sight actually.
Chickens eat a host of garden pests like aphids and chicks definitely love termites. While they help with pest control, chickens will also eat your vegetable seedlings and fruits, so you will need to limit their access to these areas.
Did you know that common factory farms keep chickens in cages (some as small as your iPad) the whole of their lives? Why is that, when chickens can do so much more for people and live a better life too?
They help reduce waste. We still do bokashi composting with most of our kitchen waste, but we also feed vegetable scraps to our chickens in a separate compost pile. You can keep this pile away from the coop to avoid attracting rats to their home.
You will also find that the chickens will eat less commercial feeds because of the kitchen scraps and the insects, saving you money. The chickens will be healthier too.
They provide eggs. Some of our chickens are native chickens called Darag, and their eggs are smaller than those we usually see in the market. But they taste good and I’m told pretty soon, we will have our regular supply of organic chicken eggs. We also add crushed egg shells back to the soil for calcium.
They can be cute pets and fun to interact with. I know. In time, I will have to eat the chickens we raise. That is one of the main reasons why we raise them – to eat free-range, organic and antibiotic-free chickens. I’m not yet there and that’s okay. For the meantime, I’m satisfied eating their fresh eggs and treating them as pets that help us in the garden.
The photos above (from left) are me carrying Wina; Tatang, perched after a bath; and Marlon feeding the new chicks and Mama Hen termites.
You can also train chickens to get in and out of their coop on their own at specific times with specific calls. And you can make them walk through their own chicken bridge too. ^_^
Chickens are an amazing and helpful addition to our permaculture garden. As with all animals we decide to keep, we need to make sure that we ourselves and our garden are ready to accommodate them. Chickens will always do what they naturally do, so it’s best plan for that.
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