Farm Fact Friday: Keeping Chickens Out of Your Flower Beds and Off Your Porch

Hello everyone welcome back to another Farm Fact Friday last week I post asking if there were any questions related to farm or agriculture that would be interesting to you and I appreciate those who responded with suggestions. Samantha miller we will be sending you a farm to table prize for your suggestion to learn more about women in agriculture in northwest Ohio so I’m going to work on building a list of what women in ag do and hopefully collaborating with those women. So that they can share their experiences so I love the idea and I appreciate it and stay tuned for more to come there today I’m going to talk about a suggestion or a question that came from our very own Amy cobb who is interested in learning how do you keep chickens out of flower beds and off your porch. So Amy thank you for your question hopefully one or more of these suggestions work I have to be honest I have never raised free-range chickens prior we did have chickens but we kept them in a coop with a large area in the back where they could run and then the roosts of course to lay their eggs.

So I love the question I had to look on some backyard chicken blogs to help me with these suggestions however I didn’t do any myth busting to see whether or not they are actually true. So if any of you have tried uh any or all of these let us know if they work or if you have your own suggestions I’d love to hear that as well. So let’s get into some of the suggestions to keep chickens out of your flower beds and off your porch the first suggestion is to take your citrus rinds and line the flower beds you can use the fruit juices on top of it as the citrus juices on top of it as well and it’s recommended that after rain those juices are reapplied. Another suggestion is to use a motion sensing sprinkler so when that chicken comes in to the flowerbed that sprinkler starts to come off or it starts to go off the only caveat to this is the sprinkler is not smart enough to know whether that motion is a chicken or a child or a dog or you so it may result in some surprises for other people who enter your flower bed as. Well okay let’s see um if you plant your flowers in the ground and the the chickens are you know going after those flowers you may want to think about planting them in raised flower beds or even using hanging baskets instead and then there are some plants that are just something that chickens do not like at all they deter the chicken from even coming close and they don’t smell too bad to us and that would be things like lavender and spearmint. Now if you don’t want to plant the actual plant it was also recommended that you could use essential oils and spray that as well so that’s a thought and then the final one for keeping them out of flower beds is um the fact that chicken are predators no they’re prey they’re prey and they have predators in the form of things like a hawk or an owl. So by buying statues and I say statues plural because it’s important to rotate the statues if a chicken is trying to come into the flower bed sees the predator comes back multiple times it’s soon going to notice that it’s just a statue so by having more than one you can rotate them and keep the chicken guessing whether or not it’s real or a decoy.

Now let’s talk about keeping your chickens off your porch which is why I’m on my porch today um the first thing is trying to figure out what is enticing that chicken to come onto your porch if anything at all. Now I know chickens can’t talk and you can’t ask them but you can maybe watch them and see if there’s a particular thing that they’re going after when they’re on your porch and maybe simply removing it would take care of that. Now porches also provide us with shade and if it’s a hot summer day maybe they’re just trying to get out of the blazing sun, so offering other options for shade could help that as well and in thinking about this knowing that the deterring plants of lavender and spearmint will keep them away or so I read maybe having those plants close to your porch entrance would also be something that could work.

So as I said never have I raised free-range chickens I gathered this from blogs so if you have experience please share your knowledge with us I’m sure Amy would appreciate that as well. So with that by golly have a great rest of your Friday a wonderful weekend and we will check you back next week for another Farm Fact Friday have a very happy Thanksgiving take care you.