How to keep chooks out of veggie beds?

[hedscha]

we are free-ranging our two chooks during the day and want to keep them out of our veggie beds. Because of ascetics we do not want a big fence around our beds. Any other ideas you used are welcome.

[MitchellMc]

Welcome to the Bunnings Workshop community @hedscha. It's terrific to have you join us, and many thanks for your question about preventing chooks from getting in your veggie beds.

A physical fence will likely be the best way to prevent access. Without a fence, I'm not sure how you could prevent them from entering the area; chooks are going to want at those juicy worms in the garden. Let me tag in one of our resident chook wranglers @mich1972 to see if she has some tips.

I note you don't want a big fence, what type of fence would you be happy with? What about draping bird netting over the crops? Could you create a run just for the chicken and keep them in there?

Mitchell

[mich1972]

Hi there @hedscha, sending you a warm welcome to the Workshop Community 🐓🐓🐓🐓 I love that you are free ranging your girls BUT unfortunately and I have experienced this with my girls, they will definitely get into your edible beds because they will want to peck at your greens and scratch through the soil for worms and other bugs. Our girls nearly destroyed our edible bed in a day of free ranging and never again will I let that happen. The mess and destruction was bad. 
So they are in their own large Chook run. I’m sorry to say you will need to put a fence around the edibles. Even just a knee high temporary fence. You could plant a small hedge around it but they are not silly and will get in. 
I don’t think there is any other way around it.