It's important for new owners to be aware that chickens love and will happily destroy grass, weeds, many varieties of plants, and most especially, freshly disturbed soil. So if you're planting vegetable seeds, seedlings or any other plant, you'll need to provide a barrier between the new digs and the chickens, or you'll quickly become frustrated with the chickens desire and intention to destroy whatever it is you planted. It's not their fault, but freshly dug soil is a chick-en magnet, because to them it means fresh bugs/grubs, and they can smell it a mile away. On the upside, if you want a patch of earth cleared of everything down to ground level, you can section off that area and put some chickens in it, until they've levelled it and then dug it up a few inches below ground level. Of course rotate them to fresh areas so they don't get bored, but keep putting them back into the area you want cleared, and those little chicken tractors will dig it up nicely, while fertilising it too. If you employ chickens at what they do best, you'll love their utility, but if you let them near your newly planted crops, you'll soon learn that there's good and bad, that goes with having chickens :) Barriers can include mesh at ground level around the plants, or lightweight fencing. The easiest way to protect your veggie patch is to completely fence it off, until you figure out how to allow the chickens access to it, once you've established a means to protect new plants from the chicken onslaught.
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