Chickens are tiny rototillers. Chickens are lightly domesticated velociraptors. Chickens are annihilators of insecta and annelida—annihilators with hyper-focused intensity. Chickens are not gardeners. Gardening with chickens? Before you read more, may I suggest Metallica’s Seek and Destroy.
A chicken’s mission is to gobble up every bug, worm, grub, leaf, fruit, and whatever other nourishment it can find. If you let your chickens free range, be certain they will not take a moment to consider what might be intentionally growing if it’s in their way. The exception is if those growing things are mature enough to bear fruit—because the leaves weren’t tasty enough to be eaten before maturity—then they will eat the fruit, or at least disfigure it. I have seen chickens gobble up (or peck discouragingly large holes in before moving on): tomatoes, bell peppers, lettuce, kale, zucchini, yellow crook neck, butternut, pansies, dill, thyme, oregano, tender seedlings, etc. The list goes on.
Should you wish to grow vegetables with free range chickens and wish to harvest and eat some of those vegetables, be prepared. The bad news: you’ll need a perimeter fence around your veggie garden. The good news: chickens can fly, but they don’t on the regular unless they really have to, so the fence only has be chicken eye level, at least that works well when they have lots of other space to roam in. Why hop over a fence your own height when there are bugs galore just outside of that fence?
Should you wish to grow flowers without fences, go big or don’t go at all. Any recently dug, moved, adjusted earth is like pinata candies showered on the floor of a party for kids of sugar-free families. Those chickens are in it, on it, all around it. Pushing, shoving, and scratching their way into the loosened soil. While it may not be as pretty or as natural, ornamentals that are smaller than a size-twelve shoebox will need to be protected with fencing or they will be kicked up in pursuit of a juicy snack. If the flowers or leaves are tasty, they will be part of the snack. The roots will be left, flipped by a bird onto the earth, right beside where you wanted something to live and grow.
You may read blog posts, books, or articles that say chickens are great gardening assets, that they will only eat the bugs in your garden, offer their nutritive deposits, and support the glorious permaculture dream. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Your flock are set—from rise until roost—on finding food and then finding more. Occasionally this is paused while having a dust, a drink, a small nap, or laying an egg, but these other activities are (maybe) a quarter of your chicken’s plan for the day. They mostly want to eat, eat, and eat some more—no matter how much wholesome chicken pellet is at their peck and claw.
Outside of worm and bugs, our chickens have eaten a number of things we never expected and we were slightly startled by. They have killed or injured small- to medium-sized birds. The same is true with voles and small field mice. They love eggs and egg shells, which is not something we ever encourage in its pure form, but occasionally an egg gets broken in the nest box or a hen lays a soft egg (more on that soon!) and the girls are absolutely jonesing to gobble it up.
I think the highlight of highlights was watching Lady and Peggy (rest in peace sweet tawny hen) lady-and-the-tramp a baby snake. And, yes, we looked very closely were astounded (and slightly disappointed) to find that the next morning the doo-doo board offering looked pretty much like nothing happened. I mean, come on, can’t there be just one little vertebrae in the stack? Nope, just cupcakes.
In 2021 we were surrounded by a Brood X cicada hatch. The yard was crawling with them and the girls gorged on these large, loud, prehistoric sized flies. There was one evening where Frecho (rest in peace, sweet chicken girl, or did you join the Gallus Gallus Circus?) binged on the crispy bites. She ate so many that her normally voluptuous crop was frighteningly swollen and we could (literally!) make out the shape of cicada bodies through her feathers. Of course, we worried a bit that she had over-stuffed and she might have eaten herself to death. No need. She did provide some rather loosey goosey doo-doos that night, which happens (we learned) with a high protein diet, and then she was back to it the next day—stuffing herself silly.
Your chickens are sweet, they are sort of interested in you, and mostly they are down for a food source. They are loyal with an agenda and that agenda does not extend beyond destroying everything in the yard that tastes good to them or comes between their beak and something that tastes good to them. Be prepared.