Chickens vs. Chicken Poop

Don’t get me wrong, I love having chickens. But they are voracious, indiscriminate eaters who will stop at nothing to destroy your vegetable garden any chance they get, and poop everywhere they can.

Lately the thought of making an uncovered outdoor run around the coop has been in the foreground of my mind. Yes, it will probably be a little unsightly, as most animal fencing is, but it will keep the chickens contained in a larger outdoor space than their current covered run has, and keep them out of our vegetable garden. While there are other creatures to contend with, squirrels and various species of birds who make our yard home, the damage a chicken can impose on a newly planted garden is like the difference between a ten mile per hour wind gust and a hurricane… with the chicken being the hurricane… which is what your garden looks like may have passed through when they are finished destroying everything.

Another option is to just keep them in their coop all day. This isn’t so bad, as the covered outdoor run area is plenty big enough for all the girls, but I just don’t like the idea of keeping them locked up like that when we have a rather large yard. And keeping them in the coop will increase their food bill, so the rise in feed will have to be taken into consideration as well.

Of course, on the flip side, the lower part of the yard, where we have the deck and “people lawn,” a.k.a. the “dog-poop-free lawn,” will also not have chicken crap everywhere. Cleaning chicken poop off of a wood deck is not as exciting as some would make it sound. In the heat of late summer, it simply bakes and flakes, making it easier to sweep it off, but the rest of the year it can be a challenge to keep clean. Chickens are pooping machines. If you were to measure the amount of poop a chicken can create in a single day, and translate that into people poop, you’d be pooping about 1/6th of your body weight every single day. And free-range chickens will poop on anything they happen to be on or around. This stuff is great after it has composted, but fresh pooh-nuggets are a force to be reckoned with.

But, I love the girls too much to keep them locked up in their covered run coop, and will probably just have them outside while I am outside and can shoo them off the deck, and hose them out of the vegetable garden. I’ve heard some people have used lawn tools, rakes and such, to keep their chickens out of certain areas as they seem to think they are chicken torture devices, but that never seems to work with ours. It’s like they know we are trying to fool them, and they just won’t be fooled. Then again, maybe I’ll tire of it, break down and buy a fifty foot roll of chicken wire fencing and some metal stakes and a makeshift gate around their coop for a majority of the time, and let them out occasionally. This should work… until they start their perimeter pacing like they do in the coop when they want out!