rich pickings
When MILLIE ROSS installed a new chicken run, she needed a method for growing greens for her ‘girls’. Behold, her DIY greens grower, which provides a staged system of chicken pickings
Ilove having chickens in my garden. I’ve been a chicken lover since I was eight, when I brought home my first girls after a classroom hatching. I’ve kept backyard chickens in every appropriate garden ever since! As a gardener, what’s not to love about chickens? They’re egg makers, pest controllers, soil aerators, fertilisers, and they’re totally hilarious.
But they can also be a hungry bunch, requiring a steady supply of a variety of leafy greens in their mixed diet.
Throughout spring and summer, weeds, grass clippings and garden waste can be scrounged in abundance, but meeting their needs in the cooler months is more of a challenge. I carefully plant a succession of vegies for my household, so I was keen to do the same for the girls. The run is a fertile place to grow greens, as it’s full of chook poop – but chickens don’t do delayed gratification, and anything that’s planted in their run will be pecked and scratched to pieces, so I needed a system!
I ended up creating a simple greens grower, which provides protection for plants as they establish. The plants grow through the ‘roof’, allowing the girls to graze but not scratch at them. When
I want to replant, or allow the girls full access to clear the area, I can neatly fold it away. My colleague joked that my contraption should be available in the big Swedish store, where it would be called
Fällbar hönsmatare – folding hen feeder! The truth is, I love my girls so much that I would endure the torture of a four-hour shopping trip for them – but a better idea is to make one yourself!
YOU WILL NEED:
galvanised mesh – I used a combo of 50 x 50mm and 25 x 25mm mesh
small bolt cutters or angle grinder
galvanising paint
C-clips or steel wire
pliers
STEP-BY-STEP MAKE A CHOOK GREENS GROWER
Adjust the size to suit your space. Mine is 120cm long, 60cm deep, 50cm high at the back and 25cm high at the front. I only need a roof, front wall and two sides, as the enclosure fence acts as the back wall.
1 CUT the mesh to size using bolt cutters or an angle grinder. Seal the cut ends with galvanising paint to prevent rusting.
2 CONNECT the roof, front and back (if needed) using either C-clips or wire (I used C-clips), attaching with a pair of pliers.
3 ATTACH the sides and clip to the wall.
4 PLANT your greens and water them in. Cover the crops and wait for them to grow!