Chickens as Lawn Mowers

As regular readers know, I started a community group, "4 Chesapeake Hens," where I live in Virginia. Our group got the law changed to allow up to six "female chickens" on all single-family residential lots with certain restrictions. There are setbacks for the coop from the property line, for example. There is also a sunset clause on the legislation, so the City Council will be revisiting the "hen issue" in October or November.

One of the reasons my husband and I wanted chickens was to help with gardening tasks such as fertilizing, tilling, compost-turning, and organic weed and pest control. What Don and I did not realize until we owned our own chickens is that they do a pretty nice job of helping to maintain parts of our back lawn and sparing us some of the use of our lawn mower. Since gas lawn-mower engines are both noisy and very polluting to the air, I now think our our hens as even more of a benefit to our local environment.

If you don't believe me, that's understandable. Folks picture chickens as dirty, smelly birds that burn the soil. But we are "urban chicksters," and our hens are kept in a portable coop and pen, also called a chicken tractor, that we move around the yard. By moving the pen frequently, we prevent the chickens from burning the soil and scratching and eating it bare. Instead they weed, graze, and slightly fertilize an area before we move them onto new ground.

This spring we had some lawnmower trouble and let the backyard go a little too long before the first mow. Our backyard is also fenced to separate the chicken/garden section from the dogs' run. Check out the differences in these sections of our yard as shown in the following pictures. I snapped them right before tackling the lawn with the mower. Keep in mind that NONE of this lawn has been mowed so far this year:

This is the area that has regularly been visited by the hens and intensively grazed due to the chicken tractor

Don't know what I mean by a chicken tractor? Here are three of our girls saying hello!

The other two are working a compost pile/future garden from a pen attached to the tractor. Where there's no lawn, there's lots of high-carbon organic matter!

Here's an area of the lawn that gets occasional visits by the chickens but is too uneven for the tractor

Here's the same lawn where the chickens never go. The paths have been worn by our three dogs. What a difference!

Interested in seeing some hens up close and personal? Visit us during the Chesapeake Tour de Coop, held next Sunday (April 21, 2013, from Noon to 5 PM, weather permitting).

Automatic Chicken Coop Door

Automatic Pop-Hole Door for Our Coop

We got one of these doors for our coop:

http://www.chickendoors.com/products.htm

It was an easy install, with only four screws used to mount the frame of the door to the coop.

We got the door with the light sensor so that we don't have to worry about programming, although we can program the door to specific times if we wish.  It can also be opened by manually actuating the motor.

This door has a "Last Chance" function which reopens the door for about ten seconds about one minute after the evening closing.  That gives any hens that dally a chance to get in.

I picked up a battery at Batteries Plus, fabricated a battery bracket from some fencing, and had it up and running in a few minutes.

So far, it has been flawless.

Gardening with Chickens

Clover sprouts are nutritious and a big hit with our hens

Now that the excitement of our first egg has settled down, Don and I are enjoying the benefit of having our chickens help us with our gardening chores. Don has built a portable pen that fits over our raised vegetable beds. Two of the beds were mostly bare, just mulched with leaves in preparation for the spring season.

Our chicken tractor links up to a raised asparagus bed in winter

Don built a pop-hole on the coop and a pop-hole in the pen over the raised bed. Then he built a narrow wooden tunnel to connect the two pop-holes. The pop-hole to the coop has a wooden cover that fits tightly at night to deter potential predators. But during the day, the chickens get more room to range, quite legally because the law requires we keep them penned. The pen also keeps them out of my winter vegetables growing undisturbed in nearby beds. Most importantly, it protects my hens from hawks that might attack them from above. We have a sturdy chain link fence around the yard, but we need to protect our birds from raptors.

The same coop viewed from the rear. Note the attached nest box.

The cover for the pop-hole to the pen

My girls have deposited some of their valuable, high-nitrogen manure in these beds, which will be much appreciated by my asparagus plants, which are heavy feeders. They've certainly found all kinds of bugs and weed seeds. I am hoping they have found any asparagus beetles and their larvae that might be overwintering in these beds. I'd like these pests to be converted to nutritious eggs while reducing my feed bills, not hatching in the spring to feed on my asparagus!

The chickens have also spread some vermicompost from our worm bins all over the bed. All we had to do was pick out the worms that we wanted to save from their voracious appetites, dump the compost in the middle of the bed, and spread a little scratch on top to encourage the girls to scratch.

The hens are checking out their new digs

A hen inpects the tunnel to her coop; pop hole visible at the rear

The girls LOVE clover! There was no trace by day's end