If your chickens have access to the garden, they will absolutely destroy it. At least a little bit. Chickens are voracious and indiscriminate ground scavengers, who love nothing more than to scratch through the earth to find tasty morsels such as grubs, bugs, and seeds.
Have a little fence around your vegetable garden. Your chickens don’t need to go right on top of your garden beds. They can run around the yard and eat bugs perfectly fine without stepping right on your plants. During the winter you can put your chickens in the garden. They can till and fertilize it.
You could be wondering “Are there any plants in my garden that are toxic to chickens?”
An abundant supply of fresh fruits, vegetables and garden greens is part of a balanced diet, but not all the plants in your garden are good for your chickens. In fact, some are toxic. Below is a list of 14 common farmstead plants toxic to your flock.
Another common question is “Are chickens good for your garden fence?”.
Even eggs shells can be ground down into a fine soil additive for good plant root health! Chickens and the garden are natural partners for a more healthy, efficient system. How you put them together, however, is a very personal choice. Will you be putting birds inside your garden fence this year?
Are chickens bad for the environment?
As the amount of chicken in the American diet increases, the environmental costs are multiplying just as fast. Eating less chicken is a powerful way that you can protect wildlife and the planet.
Is chicken good or bad for the environment?
But the truth is chicken can also wreak havoc on the climate.
However, chicken litter is far from being the only detrimental environmental impact of chicken farming. There is a misconception that since raising chickens requires fewer resources than other meats like beef, it is environmentally friendly, but this is far from true. The carbon footprint of chicken is more than double that of tofu.
Is eating all this chicken good for the planet?
As the poultry industry has exploded in recent decades, so has its impact on ecosystems around the world. Sure, switching from beef to chicken is by comparison better for the climate. But is eating all this chicken good for the planet? Not at all. Our high chicken consumption can be chalked up to a simple shipping mistake.
Is the chicken industry really that bad?
This switch and the relentless favorable comparisons of chicken over beef have had an unfortunate side effect: they’ve ended up obscuring the poultry industry’s many serious problems. But the chicken industry is pretty bad, too.