6 Ways Keeping Chickens Will Benefit Your Garden
Refreshed 6th March 2025, First published Saturday 1st August 2020
Keeping chickens in your backyard not only supplies you with delicious homegrown eggs and fantastic pets for the children but your garden and vegetable garden as well!
1
FERTILIZER
Chicken manure is one of the best things you can use to improve the soil in your garden. Once composted, chicken droppings are full of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other important nutrients, and increases the soil’s ability to hold water. This means more beautiful flowers, and bigger and more delicious vegetables! Collect your chickens’ droppings and compost for up to a year before using the manure.
2
PEST CONTROL
Chickens spend their days scratching around the garden in search of yummy treats. They love finding beetles, grubs, caterpillars and ticks. Sometimes they even go for those pesky slugs! This is an extremely environmentally friendly way of getting rid of pests, with the added benefit of happy and content hens!
3
ROTATION
Want to create a new bed in the garden? No problem, get the chickens in to do the job for you. If there’s one thing they do well it’s tilling and turning. Spread some chicken feed where you want the soil to be moved and aerated, or leave a pile of leaves that you would like spread over a resting bed, and you can be sure that the chickens will have sorted it in half the time it would take you to source a rotavator.
4
FREE WEEDING
In a similar way, if you want to clear a bed of weeds or grass, get your chickens on it. They will munch on weeds and dead matter you haven’t already removed, leaving the fun bits of gardening to you! Although clever, chickens are however not able to differentiate weeds from the plants and seeds you actually want to keep, so it’s best to keep them off flower beds and veg patches where you are growing things you actually want. Use a good fencing to limit the chickens to certain parts of the garden.
5
ADDED CALCIUM
One of the best things about keeping chickens is the delicious eggs they provide you with. But did you know that eggshells can be highly beneficial to your garden? Eggshells are made of calcium carbonate and are a perfect way to introduce minerals to your soil. Calcium is essential for building cell walls, making sure the plants stay strong and healthy. Grind up your shells with a mortar and pestle and spread on your compost, or straight in your bed.
6
GREAT COMPANY
With chickens around you will have even more reason to spend time in the garden. It’s so much fun seeing them scratch around and hear their friendly chatter, and they are great company for any keen gardener. People even claim that being around chickens relieves stress and leads to better mental health.
So what’s stopping you? Chickens are the perfect pet for you and your garden needs.
Invest in some laying hens today
and reap the rewards
Make life easy with an Omlet Eglu Chicken Coop
Easy to clean and easy to move 😊
The Eglu Pro Chicken Coop is Omlet's biggest coop. It has a huge capacity to accommodate 10 to 15 hens, is super easy to clean and is Omlet's newst coop.
The Eglu Cube Chicken Coop is the ideal hobby chicken coop for up to 8 medium-sized hens, 6 large breed hens or 10 bantams.
The Eglu Go Chicken Coop is the ideal hen house for keeping up to four medium-size chickens happy and healthy in even the smallest of gardens.
The Eglu Go UP is the ultimate raised mobile chicken coop for up to four hens and a firm favourite with chicken keepers.
If you are looking for some netting to fence in your chickens, Omlet Chicken Fencing is a great choice. This handy fencing blends into your garden and is easy to put up and move about.