More to hens than eggs

Roosters are a great alarm clock, but remember the neighbours too.

Easter conjures up images of tasty eggs and bouncing bunnies, but from a gardener’s perspective, bunnies are a no-no, but eggs and their lovely ‘layers’ are a go-go.

Hens are remarkably independent, fun and easy to keep creatures and you don’t need a huge garden or to live in the depths of the countryside to rear them. In fact, they may even be less trouble than a dog, and if given the right conditions they will live long and happy lives, supplying you and your family with fresh eggs while providing a fertility and pest management plan for your vegetable garden.

Hens make great composters and will munch through nearly all your kitchen waste, converting it into protein rich eggs, and if their manure is mixed with straw and well-composted it makes an ideal nitrogen-rich soil amendment.

Hens will be totally content as long as they have a safe coop, a continuous supply of food and water, access to forage and fresh air and somewhere to sunbathe and root around. It is best to keep them contained within a run, especially if you’re not there to watch them all day. They can’t see in the dark, so they will always put themselves to bed at dusk, but you will still have to lock them up every night, to keep them safe from prowling predators. It pays to line up friends to hen-sit while you are on holidays and to shop around for a practical coop.

Mobile chicken tractors, often called an ark, are becoming very popular on the small-holding scene. These lightly built, A-frame, floorless coops keep the hens in and the fox out. Some even have wheels to make them easier to move and bar checking for eggs and providing water and food, there is little other work to do. If placed over empty garden beds, the ladies will do a great job scratching off weeds and gobbling up insects, grubs, slugs and weed seeds. ‘Tractors’ also minimise the amount of time needed to clean coops. Traditionally hens have ranged in orchards where they keep competitive grass in check and control some of the insects that plague fruit trees. Of course, while on pest patrol, their manure droppings are fertilising the orchard as well. In return the girls enjoy the shade offered by trees, but depending on the size of your rootstocks, they will perch on lower branches to peck ripe fruits, so move them on to a fresh patch in late summer.

Hens have also been used to create new gardens from sod because if confined to a relatively small area for a few weeks, their natural scratching for food will turn grass into bare earth while the ground will also be fertilised by their droppings. In an enclosed established vegetable patch, hens will also clean up grub and slug problems while munching weed seeds.

Be warned that keeping hens may become time consuming, solely because watching your feathered friends unearthing grubs or preening their ruffled feathers can become highly addictive.