Chickens in the orchard, trial 1

You may recall that last year, we had our broiler chicks scratch up the leaf litter under our peach tree as a way of cutting down on our Oriental fruit moth problem.  While I'm sure the chicks helped, they weren't really big enough to have much impact --- you can only put chicks outside so early in the spring, and by the time the peach trees bloom, your window for pest control has ended.  So, this year, I decided to use our big-footed laying flock instead.

At first, I'd considered moving the whole flock up here, but Mark helped me see that two adult hens could have a pretty big impact pretty fast.  Rather than building the nomadic coop that I still haven't been entirely able to design in my mind, Mark fixed up one of our old tractors and I transferred two Rhode Island Reds over in the dead of night.  I left them in the closed tractor for a day to hopefully solidify their new home base, then opened the door and let them roam within some temporary fencing.

Unfortunately, the experiment was a total failure.  My theory with adding two Rhode Island Reds is that they're at the bottom of the main flock's pecking order and roost together off by themselves at night, so I figured they must get along.  It turns out they don't.  One is pondering going broody and spent most of her first day in the nest box, then decided that pecking at her sister was more fun.  In short order, the pecked-on sister flew over the fence and fled back to the rooster (who greeted her in an X-rated fashion).  Suddenly lonely, the mean sister flew the temporary coop and followed.

So now we're back to plan A --- chicks eating up whatever they can before the flowers come out.  Luckily, spring is moving slowly this year, so we may get some scratching done before full bloom.  In the long run, I'm wondering whether it would be worth raising two hens separately so they're not bonded to the main flock and would be willing to do some garden chores for me, but then I'd have to deal with tractored chickens in the winter.  I'll keep pondering....

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Chickens in the Orchard

I would try a non flying breed like Silkies. I use them around my rabbit cages, which are under my walnut tree. They do not tear up the ground like the fullsized birds do-but eat the bugs.

Comment by Heather in PA — at lunch time on Monday, March 18th, 2013

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Orchad chickens

Heather --- That's definitely an option. I'm kinda feeling that any pair of hens who grew up by themselves might be willing to stay in, though. I've raised lots of heirloom broilers with these fences and they usually don't fly out because they don't particularly want to get out. It's all about using fences as suggestions rather than rules, in my opinion....

Comment by anna — Monday afternoon, March 18th, 2013

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