I know I tend to be kind of a chicken proselytizer, always playing up the benefits of chicken-keeping and how easy it is to have hens as pets. Well, there is a darker side to backyard chickens, which I will share with you now... Chickens are jerks.
Okay, much of the time chickens are perfectly nice, and maybe even funny or interesting. But, sometimes, they can be real a**holes, like when they break through fencing boundaries and dig up a bunch of your garden even though they have the whole yard to run around and scratch in and all you're asking is that they stay out of this one space!
Yes, the dirty little secret about backyard chickens is that they can be very destructive to your plants and vegetables. Last week, my hens somehow managed to break into the only two fenced-in areas of the yard and destroy several carefully-tended squash plants. Considering how minimal my garden is this year and how late I started growing things, this was a crushing loss.
When it happened, I was pretty furious. I mean, honestly, they have a HUGE amount of space for three hens. They have weed patches, dirt patches and lots of bushes and trees to hide under. But that wasn't enough for those girls. Oh no! They had to break into my garden.
I guess the moral of this story is that chickens are very curious. When they see a nice green plant surrounded by straw, they really want to get at it. So, build your fences well and watch those chickens closely, or you may find yourself in your backyard one evening shouting swear words at three clueless hens. (This may or may not have happened to me.)
Ha! Been there, done that!
Oh yes, I think everyone with chickens has lived through a moment like this! We had the tomato massacre of 2009... I asked my honey to keep the chickens in the coop, because I couldn't figure out how those sneaky buggers were getting into the garden and I had 12 tomato plants with 100s of tomatoes just about ready to be picked. He walked outside and said he felt bad that they were all "cooped" up (really!) clearly our chickens are terribly spoiled... needless to say the chickens didn't leave a single tomato for us that year.
i just discovered your blog (la times reference). and i am a recent chicken mother. grew up with them as a kid on my grandmother's ranch (she still has 12!) but these are my first "all mine" hens. looking to your blog for inspiration all the time! i love it! my chicks are waaay into my garden. i had a rabbit who destroyed my garden, hoping the chickens might be a little more into eating the scraps than my plants - we shall see! :) they are too cute and get away with it anyway!
I know exactly what you mean, you just have to laugh otherwise you'd cry!
Just found your blog thru Backyardchickens.com, looking at coop designs. It's exactly what I want, may someday plant the top with an herb garden and intend to use the plan to work on the hubs for getting chickens. I'm starting early on this -- we are still renting and won't be able to get a house for several years, but I really want chickens! Hon says they'll be too much work, but I love the pet aspect, the eggs, and the idea of our kids knowing where their food comes from, which will eventually include where their chicken soup comes from! The circle of life and all that. Love it, cute, and a reminder that will need to clip wings and fence in the eventual garden. Thanks, love the site!
- ATL Chick