Help me decide on chickens

[scyllarus]

Another thing to keep in mind ... Placement of the coop ... If your able to have it in a shady spot in Georgia, all the better, but ... Chickens tend to stick around home ... As in the 25'-50' around the coop will most likely get the most wear and tear ... If you had shade in the middle of the back yard, the chickens would spread out and use more of the yard, compared to the coop in a corner.

Some chickens will tend to roam farther than others, some will scratch more than others ...

If you're planting this fall, by spring chick season you will want some type of protection for the new plants, or the little dinosaurs will dig them up and eat them, give the plants a chance to get established for a year or more ...

The yard has a few trees near the back and one big tree midway along one side. We're definitely going to plant more trees and shrubs this fall because the yard is otherwise just grass. But I hear you with having plant protection - I talked to the Husband about gardening and had to remind him that other places that are not Florida have things called seasons, and if he wants to rip up the yard to make permaculture swales then we're going to need to postpone chickens for another year to let things grow...y'know, since they don't usually do much growing in the winter. We might end up compromising and closing off a bit of yard that's already fenced off within the back yard so we could free range the chooks under supervision for the first year.

How big does a shrub/tree need to be before a chicken won't murder it? I figured we'd put down some blackberry brambles, mulberries, or blueberries in the fall and let them overwinter before we attempted chickens. I've also considered mayhaws, loquats, persimmons, peaches, or crabapples for trees...we're also thinking a corner with bamboo, and that's not even getting into the tender plants...

 

[tlcmurphy]

I think chickens would be fine with bamboo, but you definitely don’t want to raise Pandas….

 

[scyllarus]

I think chickens would be fine with bamboo, but you definitely don’t want to raise Pandas….

Haha! No, I wouldn't. I'm the one eating those bamboo shoots, thank you very much!

(Bamboo shoots - which look like weird upside-down ice cream cones and eventually sprout into bamboo canes - are used as a vegetable!)

 

[tlcmurphy]

They’re delicious!

 

[123RedBeard]

The berries are probably going to need a year at least of root protection ...

 

[scyllarus]

The berries are probably going to need a year at least of root protection ...

Oh, I figure. I'm currently coming to sad terms that I probably won't have chickens until 2026, though the Husband insists that we can figure it out. He's not the one looking over potential plants, though. I think we might have to reinforce a bit of yard that, for reasons unbeknownst to me, is fenced off from the rest of the yard and use it as a run the first year if we do get chickens in 2025. Ugh. We'll see.

 

[CatInTheHenHouse]

Put chicken wire around the plants?