Garden Runs

Backyard Poultry

Chicken Runs in the Fall Garden

Um...well...maybe this is still not a picturesque scene, but it’s better than rocks and styrofoam! Also a lot less work, though more improvement will come. Here you can see the chickens in the garden beds. We put them on finished beds to scratch up the soil, and they found plenty of beetles and worms too, I’m sure. This is the idea of a “chicken tractor,” where you keep the hens concentrated over a patch of soil to turn it over naturally. It didn’t work fantastically for us in the end though—they mostly just dug dust holes, and left the rest alone. I think the soil has to already be pretty loose to work very well.