Gardening with chickens

With chickens in your yard, you could make them work for you…indeed, in the spring, take them to the vegetable garden and they will work your land and fertilize it at the same time. With the help of a tunnel or a removable mini net pen you could delimit the places where they can spend the day scratching your soil. The most ecological gardening there is! 

Hens eat harmful insects such as slugs, scargots, ants, ant eggs, sowbugs, larvae. When emptying the chicken house, the mixture of wood chips, peat moss and hen droppings, rich in nitrogen, is a powerful activator for compost. The eggshells provide valuable minerals.

If you have a small yard and little grass, keep the grass in the summer and keep it for your chickens or ask your neighbourhood lawn care professionals to keep some for you every week!

Composting with chickens is sexy and trendy!

Chicken manure is a perfect source of nitrogen for a compost pile and a hen can produce about 4 kilograms of manure per month. That’s enough to compost a cubic yard of carbon-rich leaves and organic matter!

To make a large compost, you need carbon and nitrogen (c:n) sources of about 30:1. Poultry manure is very rich in nitrogen. This means that you need little manure to compost large piles of leaves, hay, straw, grass, wood rip etc. Leaves, for example, are rated at (47:1), so for every 1 pound of chicken manure, you can compost 45 pounds of leaves! A little goes a long way with chicken manure!

A real tiller on foot!

A hen can plough back up to 50 square feet of established land in just 4-6 weeks! They can get rid of weeds and do all the work without using gas engines!

Great sources of natural soil fertilizers!

One hen can provide enough nitrogen fertilizer for a 50 square foot garden in just over a month. Nitrogen levels in chicken manure are simply great for compost, it is the key ingredient to fertilize our gardens!

They return and bring oxygen to the compost heap!

Chickens can help you do the job of turning a compost heap! In order for your compost to break down into humus, it must get oxygen. The more air you give it, the faster it will decompose. This is exactly what chickens like to do all day long.

Some plants are poisonous while some of which comfrey will be your chickens’ favorite. Know how to protect them from poisonous plants.

Chickweed or field chickweed (Anagallis arvensis, Lysimachia arvensis) is an annual plant of the Primulaceae family. It is a creeping plant with red, or sometimes blue flowers, which grows in crops, gardens … The fruits are pyxides producing many seeds. Chickweed has small red flowers in which are poisonous seeds. Not to be confused with the nasturtium which looks like it.Rhododendron is toxic and normally they do not tend to approach it. On the other hand, they might eat rhubarb leaves which are toxic to them and have some diarrhea.

Nasturtium

The properties of nasturtium :

Nasturtium (Tropaeolum majus) is an annual or perennial herbaceous climbing plant of the Tropaeolaceae family. Its rowing stems can reach 1 m in height, its leaves are round and petiolate. Its flowers are composed of serrated petals of an orange color.
Flowers and leaves can be picked throughout the summer. Native to South America, present in North Africa.
Other names: great nasturtium
and “common nasturtium” in English.
Components : Flavonoids, oxalic acid, myrosine, vitamin C. glucosinolate (glucotropaeoline) and an enzyme (myrosinase)
The virtues of nasturtium: antibacterial, disinfectant, anti-inflammatory, mucolytic, antiseptic, stimulant, expectorant and diuretic. mucolytic and expectorant, antitussive, healing and deworming (seeds).

– natural antibiotic.
– against the flu and cold.
– against diseases of the respiratory tract and kidneys.
– disinfect wounds (small wounds) and promote their healing.
– Fight against hair loss.
– treatment of kidney, intestinal, ear and tonsil inflammations.
– promoting the evacuation of nasal and bronchial secretions.
– against the replication of viruses and bacteria.
– helps to fight against colds, bronchitis and coughs.
– to treat acne.
– to treat cancer.

Comfrey

Comfrey, the enemy to kill?
http://www.lelotenaction.org/pages/content/archives/la-consoude-tresor-du-jardin-ennemi-des-labos.html

https://www.richters.com/

image: http://www.lelotenaction.org/medias/images/consoude-2.jpg?fx=r_550_550

Plants like comfrey are very rare in the plant world: Comfrey is able to extract vitamin B12 from the soil. Comfrey contains an impressive number of amino acids (18) including methionine, tryptophan, lysine, isoleucine, niacin, choline, panthotenic acid. This makes it a relatively rich plant and concentrated in proteins (up to 35% of dry matter). The presence of mucopolysaccharides, glycosides, beta-sisterol, steroid saponins, triterpenoids can be noted in bulk.
Chickens love comfrey leaves as part of their diet. These leaves contain many different amino acids.

For some years now, comfrey has been a controversial issue in the United States. It contains alkaloids, mainly concentrated in the root, seeds and young leaves. Several studies have been conducted but the results are contradictory. Comfrey advocates denounce studies conducted by the pharmaceutical industry, according to which comfrey could cause a liver disease, called veno-occlusive liver disease or Budd-Chiari syndrome. This disease causes the narrowing of the blood vessels of the liver resulting in poor liver function. As a result of these studies, carried out in the 1980s, Canada and the United States took measures to ban or restrict the use of this plant, provoking the anger and indignation of many citizens, herbalists, specialists, who shout scandal. So what is the situation? What remains certain is that this plant has been used by men for more than two thousand years, both for its therapeutic and nutritional properties. For internal use (food and care), it is preferable to consume only mature leaves (avoid roots and young shoots), and confine yourself to Symphytum officinalis, the wild comfrey, also known as comfrey, comfrey, or cut grass. Avoid hybrids such as “Russian Comfrey” or “Bocking 14”, species sold in specialty stores, and prefer wild and local comfrey, which is found on the edges of forests, near streams and all wet places.

The craze for the decoration of our courtyards has become such that the garden centers offer you beautiful objects such as fountains, statues, chimes, bird baths etc.. But in my opinion, the most beautiful element of decoration, will always be a mobile ornament such as the urban hen…

http://www.lesbeauxjardins.com/catalogues/catalogues-org.htm

Chickens cannot actually fly like birds, but they can leap and fly short and low distances. If your chickens tend to want to fly over a fence, you can cut off the first section of feathers. Do you want to take your chickens for walks over sections of your yard or vegetable garden safely? Do you want to put your hens to work preparing and fertilizing the soil? The tunnels for hens are practical, removable, inter changeable and light accessories. You can join several tunnels together.

Protect your flowers and vegetables by changing their route every day so they can find grass and insects naturally without worrying!
They love earthworms, so have fun with them in the garden and turn over a shovel of earth and you’ll see them revealing.
The Peck and Play is available for purchase online with Murray McMurray Hatchery Inc. at
www.mcmurrayhatchery.com