Chickens are a fun and rewarding way to provide your family with delicious, fresh eggs. Chickens are natural foragers with instincts to eat insects and weeds, actually helping with your feed budget. In a large enough grazing area, the grass will love the aeration and fertilization that chickens provide. They’ll even eat weed seeds, and other insects that might damage your lawn. A healthy diet of leafy greens helps your chickens produce eggs with gorgeous dark yellow and even orange colored yolks. However, if they don’t have very much pasture space to forage, they’ll quickly turn their chicken run into a dust bowl. And, before long, you’re heading over to the Snohomish and Monroe Co-Op for advice about dirt and mud control in the chicken run.
When you don’t have a large area for chickens to pasture, we have a project that’s easy to complete, and will help to ensure at least some of your chicken’s foraging area will provide leafy greens that your chickens will love.
Here’s what you’ll need for your project:
- Eco Green Grid Panels
- Eco Green Grid Stakes
- Pasture Seed – any kind will do. Chickens are not picky. Dutch White Clover is a good choice because it’s easy to keep and grows really well in the Pacific Northwest.
- Potting Soil, if needed
- Straw – chopped straw or straw sweepings work best because the smaller pieces will fit between the edges of the grid
- Water to promote seed germination
First, decide which area you’d like to grow your chicken pasture. Visit us at the Snohomish and Monroe Co-Op and pick up a panel or two of Eco Green Grid, as well as all the other supplies listed. Eco Green Grid is a plastic erosion control form consisting of 12, interlocking 1-foot by 1-foot panels that can be arranged in the pattern that best fits your space. The Eco Grid will be your pasture’s protection from the chickens' excessive scratching that digs up plants’ roots.
Eco Green Grids have a smooth lower side that is meant to sit on the ground, with walls to fill in with gravel, rocks, or dirt. The walls keep ground material from washing away. For this project, place the Grid upside down, so it works more like a shallow cage. Mark on the ground the outline of the grid, so you know where to plant your pasture seed.
If the weather has been very dry and the soil is compacted, it helps to dampen the planting area first. This way the seeds won’t just wash away when they’re watered. Scatter your pasture seed, and gently rake into the soil. It helps to add a thin layer of potting soil over the top of the seeds. Press the seeds into place. Seeds need contact with moist soil to germinate.
Cover the planted area with a thin layer of straw to protect the seeds from being foraged by your chickens or other birds. Place your Eco Grid Panels upside down, over the straw and seeded area. We are using the Eco Grid to form a cage so that the chickens will only be able to pick at the grass once it’s grown tall enough, rather than being able to scratch and forage at root level.
Stake down your EcoGrid to keep it in place. Keep the area evenly moist until germination occurs, usually in 7 to 10 days. If you plant your pasture seed in late summer to early autumn when temperatures are still warm and we’re expecting a couple days to a week of rain, you won’t need to water the area. After a week or two, you’ll see new tufts of pasture grass sprouting. As your chickens nibble at the ends they can reach, the pasture roots will be stimulated to fill in thicker, just like a mowed lawn.
You shouldn’t need to fertilize your new patch of pasture. The chickens will do that for you. Scatter new seeds, or overseed, the area once a year to promote healthy growth. You could even provide a few Eco Grid pasture plots by planting different types of seeds: plant a patch of kale, clover, carrot, or beet greens.
As the chickens nibble the parts they can reach, the plants will sprout new growth. Annual vegetables will need to be reseeded in the spring, as many won’t survive a strong winter freeze, but kale might.
Not only will your EcoGrid chicken pasture provide healthy greens to forage, it will also take care of stubborn muddy areas that arise when heavy rains set in. Visit us here at the Snohomish and Monroe Co-Op for Eco Grid, grass, clover, and veggie seeds, and all of the supplies you’ll need to start your chicken pasture project today.
We’ll see you at the Co-op!
