Its called mobbing. Putting too many animals in a small space. They eat the grass too nothing and fertilize the ground. I seen where others were using chickens to work in their gardens. Not a weed one is growing in their pen, but when I turn mine in the garden they dig up plants and don't always eat the weeds. I saw a plan for a moveable collapsible chicken tractor here 
So I built one. I used plastic bird net so it is lighter I also didn't make a separate side panel because of the plastic net. The chickens can get out the sides if I don't put something in front of the sides. I move them up and down the rows and they weed, loosen soil, fertilize and work it in, and they find and eat all the grub worms. So far I am very pleased.
My only problems are putting the chickens in an taking them out. The garden is a short walk from their pen and I can't open the door and tell them to go and get in the chicken tractor and get to work. For some reason they don't listen to well.
Looks like a good idea! Maybe you can throw some sort of feed (or treat, ours like catfood) into the pen each time so they sort of get "trained" to go in. Might try to make something like this, our garden was overgrown when we bought the place last year and I totally lost the battle against the weeds :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Idea. I will have to try that. I was just trying feed but the chickens were more interested in the plants.
DeleteThey take the work out of it! Also if you have a least 6" of mulch the worms will take care of weeds! Check out this post and video on my blog:
ReplyDeletehttp://theredeemedgardener.blogspot.com/2012/02/back-to-eden-gardening-gods-way.html
Wow! This is GREAT!!!!! Something like this has been on my to-do list, but I hadn't thought to make it collapsable. Excellent idea!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea!
ReplyDeleteLOL! Brilliant! We are hoping to get on a small homestead soon and I'm going to show this to my husband because we definitely want chickens!
ReplyDeleteOmgosh. I love it! What a great idea. I was just thinking, though - wonder how our rooster Ralph Macchio would like to be picked up and put into this little run? He's not always the friendliest. :) It's still a great idea though. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteGood job, I like it. I just stumbled onto your blog. Mine is homeschoolblogger.com/4dfarms
ReplyDelete