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Home Home and Family Pets Chicken Arks - Great For Getting Your Garden Cleared and Your Chickens Fed
Chicken Arks - Great For Getting Your Garden Cleared and Your Chickens Fed PDF Print E-mail
Written by Mary Marshall   
Our hens go straight for the garden when they're let out. They'll eat a few strawberries, maybe, but the odd pecked bit of fruit is worth it for all the slugs and snails they'll eat.
by MaryMarshall


Our hens go straight for the garden when they're let out. They'll eat a few strawberries, maybe, but the odd pecked bit of fruit is worth it for all the slugs and snails they'll eat.

If you let your hens out late in the day, they won't roam as far. Watch them, though as predators can be around even in daylight. At dusk you'll find them waiting by the chicken ark.

Chicken arks can be moved around so the hens get new ground to peck and scratch and they can clear selected parts of the backyard. You will control what they eat that way - no more prize blooms or select fruit lost. They can clear vegetable plots before you sow or flowerbeds as foliage dies back, for example. You just keep moving the chicken ark.

Chickens can clear grass areas quickly, so don't put them on areas of lawn you want to preserve. But if you've got a patch with lots of moss, they will soon scratch it up and you can re-seed.

Although chickens aren't weeding machines, they will reduce the vigor of perennial weeds, and their scratching will grub up a lot of annual weeds. Make sure if you put the chicken ark under trees, that they do get good light for at least a good part of the day as they need light to lay.

Vegetable and kitchen scraps are fine, but leave out the meat so you don't get rodents.

Grit in the form of sand or small stones is important for chickens' digestion, and they will need oyster shells for calcium to ensure the eggs have good shells. If your chickens are foraging and pecking around in the chicken ark, and you move it regularly plus a regular supply vegetable scraps, this should give them the range of nutrition they require to produce up to 300 eggs a year.

About the Author:

Check out downloadable chicken ark plans which include full instructions for a moveable chicken ark, a rectangular hen house and pitched roof chicken coop. There's excellent information on all aspects of keeping chickens at The Chicken Ark with articles on keeping chickens great product comparisons of chicken arks, coops and hen houses.

Kindly provided by 4Girls.dk You are welcome to use this article on your own website, if you include this link.
 
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