Chickens in the Garden

These are our chickens. The handsome guy above is Ace and he's an Araucana, a breed from Chile. He was a gift to us from Randall Jones, aka Chicken Man. Actually we made a trade. Two roosters for a few yards of mulch. We love to barter! We have a Dominique (aka Dominicker) hen named Donna, a Red Star hen named Pebbles, and a Rhode Island Red hen named Lucy. And the other rooster is also a solid white tufted Araucana named Face. That's him below with Donna right beside him and Lucy to the right who seems to have spied something edible by the stare she's giving it.

Our chickens live at the nursery we operate and they make us laugh every day. Chickens really do have a lot of personality and ours have become very friendly. They are nosy, curious creatures and they follow us around like pets. Sometimes even when we're helping customers, the flock goes with us as we look at plants. They scout for bugs all day, eating caterpillars and anything else that moves. Chickens will eat all sorts of pests including Japanese beetles. They also love to eat greens and grasses. That's where the chickens themselves can become the problem. But so far, ours meander through the flowerbeds, plucking at an occasional pansy bloom or kale leaf but really leaving no sign that they were there.

We're certainly not chicken experts so I'm not giving advice on chicken rearing except to say that knowledge is power (whether we're talking chickens or gardening). So my best advice to you is to talk to people who raise chickens and get good books on the subject. Then give it a try. They're easier to care for than you might think. Food, water, shelter. That's the basic necessities.

That's Donna on the left with Ace. The Araucana is what's called a "rumpless" breed and you can see by the lack of his erect tail feathers what that means. Kinda cute.

Here are a few links you might find helpful:

www.backyardchickens.com/

www.urbanchickens.org/