As I mentioned a few weeks ago, my younger hen Linda was getting brutally bullied by some of my older girls. My temporary solution was to let Linda, and often her buddy Doris, out to free range every day, leaving the other three girls in the run. This let Linda's head wound heal, but it resulted in some collateral damage.

This is what happens when chickens get free access to your strawberry plants.



So, yea, it was pretty clear that if I wanted to have any kind of garden--container or otherwise--we needed to find some way to keep the hens away from the plants.

Initially, I was thinking of some series of wire mesh cages to go over my containers. That seemed rather complicated and elaborate. Plus, I have garden beds and containers all over the yard. I'd have to make the whole place a crazy fortress in order to keep the hens away from all my different fruits and vegetables. Clearly, the easiest and smartest solution would be to fence in the chickens. I'm not sure why I didn't think of that sooner, like three years ago.

Luckily, our chicken coop is situated in a part of the yard that's free of garden beds and largely unlandscaped. Even more luckily, I have a husband who is good at building things. Thus, our new chicken pen was created in only 2 short days.

Dakota used the same nice heavy gauge wire fence that he used in the run, and some green metal fence posts, to build a spacious enclosure in the bottom left corner of the backyard. Here's the fence that starts at the left side of the run and extends to the fence we share with our neighbors. I planted a few rosemary bushes just below this section to help hold up the hillside, and I'm going to plant some lavender on the uphill side this weekend.

After the fence was complete, he built a nice gate out of wood right near the door to the run. We kept the coop itself outside the fence, so we can still easily get to the nesting box, and I can re-plant the green roof (for the third time) without the worry that the chickens will destroy it immediately.

The new pen setup is working really nicely. We go downstairs every morning and open the door to the run, and all the girls head out into their free range area to dig and frolic to their hearts content. All our fruit trees and most of our plants are on the non-chicken side of the fence, so they are now safe from chicken claws and beaks. The hens all seem really happy with their new contained freedom, and Linda's head is completely healed.

I feel good knowing our hens have lots of space and fun stuff to do while we're away from the house. After all, the whole reason we got chickens was to get eggs from happy, healthy, free range chickens.

As longtime readers of this blog and my family members know*, I enjoy getting exceptionally dorky garden-related gifts. So, for my birthday this year, my parents got me a Worm Factory worm bin and 1,000 Red Wigglers. I was thrilled!

Both items arrived on the same evening, and my son and I had a great time prepping the bin for our new worm friends. It was a slightly more elaborate process than I expected, but, luckily, we had some dry leaves and composted dirt close at hand to add to the coconut coir and shredded newspaper that came with the bin.

I got a 3-tier bin, and so far we're still on Bin #1. The worms seem happy, and I've been casually giving them small handfuls chopped vegetable trimmings, coffee grounds and dry leaves for the last couple of weeks. It's hard to tell how well things are functioning, but the worms are active and growing bigger, so that seems like a good sign.

One nice thing about the Worm Factory is that is has all the important info printed on the lid. I think I'm doing a decent job with temperature and moisture control, but, since I'm a newbie, it's tough to be sure. I plan to shred up some junk mail today to add to the bin for the "fiber" part of the process. I also occasionally have little spouts growing out of the compost. I'm unsure if that's just an expected occurrence from adding plant matter to moist soil, or if it's an indicator or too much or too little moisture. Does anyone know?

My son is very interested in the whole worm composting process, which is an added bonus. He likes to show his friends the bin and tell them the worms are "making compost." And he's very excited to add the worm castings to our plants when the time comes. I'm happy to be able to share all my nerdy gardening interests with him. By the time he's old enough to have his own garden, he'll should be a total expert.

* These groups have significant overlap.

My newest chickens, Doris and Linda, have been integrated into the flock since June, and, sadly, things are not going very well. Linda, the Langshan, is being pretty brutally bullied by the older hens. The weird thing is, they lived together fairly peacefully for the first several months. Then, in early October, I came home to find that Linda's head was bleeding.

Over the next couple of days, the older girls managed to give her a pretty nasty wound on one side of her head, just behind her left eye. We added some additional perches to the run and put a second feeder up high, so that Linda didn't have to eat at the main feeder with the older girls. And we tried to free range everyone as often as possible. But, they kept picking on her. Her injury started to look really bad and I was very worried--although, happily, she didn't show any signs of distress beyond a general (reasonable) fear of her coop-mates. (I was worried about them pecking her brain, but she seems to be mentally okay--as far as I can tell.)

Our eventual solution was to let Linda and Doris out of the coop on their own every morning. I put out food and water for them in the yard and they free range all day, while the mean girls stay inside the run. Then, everyone free ranges in the evening after we get home from work. This method has allowed Linda's wound to heal somewhat, although it's still vulnerable to bleeding if one of the big girls gets at her.

Linda seems okay, though. She's even laying brown eggs, which is great. But, the daily segregated free-range doesn't seem like a perfect long-term solution since it leaves my garden completely vulnerable to Doris and Linda's sharp claws and voracious appetites. Plus, when it rains this winter, they're going to want to go inside the coop. And I don't know what we're going to do next time we go out of town.

I'm not sure what I can do next, beyond expanding the run so everyone can spread out more. I think part of the problem might be that they older girls don't want to give up any of their space. A bigger run would definitely help, but that takes time and hard work from Dakota. I don't know when he'd be able to get around to a project like that.

Tina is getting kind of old, so I imagine she'll die of natural causes pretty soon, and that will help with the space issue. Her death might also reshuffle the pecking order a little. Linda and Doris are big and hearty. If they would just stand up for themselves, I think the other girls would stop bullying. But, unfortunately, I can't give a chicken the "punch the toughest guy in the prison yard" pep talk. Maybe she'll figure it out on her own.