Here’s a Chicken Gardening/Composting Idea

Right now we have chickens in a couple of movable tractors. A cattle panel one, and a PVC one.

I am not that impressed with either design, so I have an idea.

Why not take a goat pen setup like this:

Then put it over a section of the garden, like this frosty row garden area:

The soil greatly lacks humus, so my idea is to pen in the chickens and throw in lots of mulch, then let them turn and scratch and compost it for us, right there where we’ll plant in spring.

Right now the goats are tied up out there and eating all our frost-damaged vegetables.

They add a little manure and a lot of trouble. Just look at this face!

She is hilarious.

But goats don’t add a lot of manure or humus to the soil. Not like the compost we get from the chicken run.

So: let’s just make an enclosure and run birds in it! I could stick the cattle panel tractor in there, then put 4 5′ panels around it and let the whole thing sit out there for a few months, throwing lots of kitchen scraps, weeds, mulch, etc., in there to be worked into the soil.

Then we can re-shape our raised rows and we’ll have a 16′ x 16′ area that’s loaded with good humus and nitrogen.

I will film it soon. You’ll see – it’s going to be great.

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