Building a Chicken Orchard! 🐔🌳
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 พ.ค. 2024
- Join Jacques and I as we build a protective and productive orchard in the outdoor run for Jacques' chickens! This experiment should protect his hens from birds of prey while throwing a ton of fruit out over the next few years!
00:00 - Intro
00:58 - Introducing The Cast
01:34 - The Setup
04:37 - Building The Tree Surrounds
07:50 - Planting A Lemon Tree
12:28 - Chicken Proofing The Orchard
13:30 - Mulching
15:15 - Root Bound Problem
16:33 - Outro
IN THIS VIDEO
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Awesome 🐔
Awesome concept!
And what gorgeous girls y'all have!
Hey guys i think there's someone pretending to be your channel messaging about contacting them through WhatsApp. Its on my above comment. ^^^^ i reported it. Hope it wasn't you for real lol
You could make the chickens a salad box where you build a frame, chicken wire the top and plant some greens in it. The mesh stops them from scratching and pulling out the greens so it continues to grow for them.
Great idea!
This works really well. Our chickens love it.
That's what we did and it worked pretty great!
Super cool !!
Oh this is a brilliant idea!!
Chirp needs a channel! She is a charismatic, young, influencer she needs to build her brand! 😂 🐣
Haha! She sure does! Its amazing that each chicken has their own unique personality
For Jacques, my chickens really enjoy mustard, kale, malabar spinach, nasturtiums, pea shoots, sweet potato greens, comfrey, and more. I just grow their crops in a big cage and they can peck their heads in to chomp.
Chickens and gardens just go together. Great idea
Yes they do!
No one has done this. #mulleditover 😑
Edible acres TH-cam based out in New York has a similar scenario going on. They are a great resource for this style of chicken yard. They also implemented a deep mulch system in with their chickens (leaves, wood chips, grass clippings) to add organic matter which allows them to harvest compost from their chicken yard. I hope someone finds this helpful.
Yes and you can see the evolution of their system over time.
Edible Acres -
Chicken compost Orchard Playlist
th-cam.com/video/s7AoVu9ql-c/w-d-xo.html
Chicken Compost Playlist
th-cam.com/video/65li_zGrHOo/w-d-xo.html
Edible acres is my favourite chicken you tube channel 😁
The best channel on TH-cam
For anyone else looking for more content similar to this, Takota Coen of Coen Farms in Canada is also doing some great work. I believe you can find his chicken system over at Verge Permaculture here th-cam.com/video/dWglJAaqcp8/w-d-xo.html
My neighbor growing up did the chicken orchard thing. The chickens' run was on the west side of the yard next to the block wall. That side of the yard also had the citrus trees. The block wall protected the chickens and the tree bases from the intense afternoon sun. Summertime temps often ranged between 105-120°F. Since our subdivision was built in an old citrus orchard, all the houses had an opportunity to be irrigated. The chickens were VERY active after a flooding.. a veritable bug feast.
Inverted milk crates work well for protecting areas you are growing out for the chickens. The plants still get plenty of light, but the crates are heavy enough to keep the chickens from toppling them over. You can remove one or two crates at a time, or even just remove it for a few hours, then put it back to let the plants regrow.
Here in the UK 2 years ago I planted apple, pear and plum trees in my chicken run as it looked empty. I planted into the ground, occasionally they have a scratch but not enough to damage, sometimes this helps in the hot weather as I can pool water to make sure the roots get a good drink the trees are thriving. If the chickens dig too much I just put some large rocks around the base. Also I built a roof on the run so wild birds can't get in to steel/damage my fruit. All the leaves and unwanted fruit can fall to the ground where the chickens convert this back into the ground and any bugs don't stand a chance. Brilliant video I think more people should do this.
I love the way the chicken orchard turned out! I’ve been saving up to plant a bunch of fruit trees in my bird run next spring, and I love how streamline the raised beds make things. My local soil has similar drainage problems.
Hot tip if you’d like to make it easy to round up escapee chickens: start training them to come running to the sound of a shaking treat bag, or a vocal call (mine is “chick-chick-chick!”). Not only will it make it infinitely easier to wrangle them if they get out, you can also use it to call them back to their sheltered run if you spot a predator or something.
Great idea!
I trained my chickens to come at a vocal call, but at this point, all I need to do is bump into one of their treat jars and they come running! 🤣🤣🤣
My grandpa used to have a chicken that jumped into his lap on command, they can be taught a lot of things. They also knew that if he had visitors sitting outside they'd probably get some treats if they stayed around.
Love this! My parents actually have their chickens in their orchard. It’s amazing for the trees! They had a big tree that had stayed the same size for a few years and the first few months the chickens were in there it had probably a couple feet of new growth!
Nice! 👍
This is certainly a great idea. Give it a few years and you’ll be plentiful. We do something similar at our farm but with ducks and geese. We free range them in the orchard pasture all fenced in and a few embden geese as guards from the hawks. I put them to bed nightly too shouting “Tulugan Na” (Go to bed in Tagalog) since my wife is a Filipina I thought it’d be funny if they would all go back to their house when I tell them too. Especially if I ever get my pond built then I’ll need to get them to bed from the water. Cool video guys. Cheers, Chad from Ontario, 🇨🇦
Omg that little chicken waddling out and looking up for food reminds me of my Hens! I love chickens so much. Also do be careful, chicken droppings contain ammonia, which can kill/burn crops. It needs to be aged to be good for fertilizer. I’m sure you already know that, but in case anyone wanted to try this and didn’t know
I just want to take a moment to appreciate the chickens’ super Mario brothers sound effects. 🔥🐓
Loved that part! :)
My grandma never used a coop, her hens always lived free on the yard and went to sleep on a tree next to the house
One memory is to listen the rooster _very_ close to home, singing and waking us up so early in the morning because of that
Perfect. Let the chickens fertilize your fruit trees...while the tree shelter and shade the birds. I protect the roots by cutting landscape timbers to size and then stagger them around the base of the trees/bushes. It's also perfect for seeding herbs, plants, flowers between the timbers. The chickens can eat all their favorite plants, but the roots are protected from aggressive scratching.
Chirp is super cute! She reminds me of my Buff Orpington named Red. She, too, was our friendliest chicken. She was also smart, full of personality, curious, and was the top hen in the pecking order. She didn’t bother the chickens, and they didn’t bother her; she put some chickens in their place every once in a while! Lol
She passed away in June 2020 at the age of seven. We miss her, but she had a fantastic life, and she was the perfect example of a friendly pet chicken! 😊😘🐓
Chirp is listening so intently. She's a good student. Jaque should be proud.
EdibleAcres has done some neat things with their open chicken compost area including trees/bushes, duckweed ponds and vermiculture all in the same place
EdibleAcres does awesome work! I've been wanting to see something similar in a warmer climate, love the comparison
these are the kinds opf projects I dream of for when I get my own property. I've still got a little ways to go, but you guys are keeping me excited to start putting things in the actual ground.
Also, the chicken wrangling reminded me of Ocarina of Time cuckoo wrangling, and I love that
You can also make a compost heap in the orchard or their run, they'll peck out weed seeds, turn it for you and add extra fertilizer to the pile
Our fruits just arrived. We're constructing the fence... deer out, chickens in. We have clay & rock. The raised bed will really help with work & back!
I think what you're doing is a great idea, I did the same thing 3 years ago but on a much much larger scale. Everything went great for about a week, and then the chickens ate the bark off all of the fruit trees from the ground up as high as they could reach in one day. So unfortunately all of the fruit trees died. So you may want to think about putting some kind of protection around the trunks of your trees. Good luck
😭 wow horrible! Yes make a mesh cloth protective cage for sure!!
It’s cool to see you doing this. We did the same thing with our chicken run and the chickens love it. They get the fallen fruit, fertilize the trees, keep pests down… it’s a win/win!
We're in Colorado zone 5b/6a. We've started with a Siberian Pea Shrub right outside our run because we know we'll be moving our run over about four feet sometime later this year. This let us go ahead and get the plant in the ground so it can get established without the chickens overwhelming it and they get used to seeing it and being around it. We'll be planting a mulberry soon in the same area. We may have to wrap the shrubs /trees in a wire cage for a season but their roots should be well established by the time we get around to moving the run so probably not 👍🏻
As a person from Wyandotte, OK i watch Kevin all the time and hearing his friend pronounce the name correctly was super satisfying i dont know why. Every person on TV/media is always says "Wayandottie" when its phonetically "Winedot"
This has given me some great ideas for my tiny flock of one. She loves to work in the garden when I am in there and has eliminated my cut worm problem. I think the rotational grazing would be a nice treat for her when she is not allowed in the garden because the plants are in their tender stage. Even though we are in totally different zones (I am in Canada) I learn a lot from your canal. Thank you.
Buff Orpingtons are the best!! And they ADORE figs! (I speak from experience. Oh, and hens can jump pretty high when figs and mulberries are the goal. You've been forewarned.) Try planting some amaranth and such for them. Protect it when it's small. Good luck and have fun watching the girls!!!
I have my chicken coop built under my apple trees. It works amazing! The apple fruits that fell are eaten by my chickens, their poop fertilise the trees. I just pile up all the leaves and old rotten apples under the tree and chickens get entertained digging thru it....
I'm actually getting chickens in the near future, planning on doing a chicken feeder garden around the outside of the run close up to the fencing so they can reach their side of the plant but not the whole thing or the roots... Now I may add a tree or two in the run itself... I have a bunch of landscaping rocks (too large for them to peck through) around the tree roots/trunks.
Ha!!! I literally just fenced in our chicken pasture and bought 8 fruit trees to make a chicken orchard!!! I have never seen anyone do this before, so I love that I get to see how you guys build yours!
If you make the tree too comfortable where you plant it, it won’t send its roots out to find nutrition. Where I live, it is extremely windy, so having them send their roots out from the beginning is actually important, so that they are stable. We do stake them, but if the trees haven’t got good stability using their own roots, they do actually ended up settling in slanted, because the winds move the stakes and the trees! So treat ‘em mean to keep ‘em keen!
I just read about putting chicken wire over just planted bulbs to thwart squirrels from digging them up, so your solution will probably work for the chickens.
I’m trying to grow an orchard for chicken protection. I wish I’d known about these Birdies beds sooner. I still have a moringa tree I can plant this way.
I love my chicken children so much. Glad I found this video. I watched you a lot a year ago and you helped me with my garden so much. Lots of knowledge from you.
I saw your idea and I am building something similar but instead of wire over the soil I am going to plant herbs and then put rabbit fence around it so they can pick what grows through the fence and we will have herbs for the house too
What a great idea!! Love dual use space & maximizing property! The quiet escape was hilarious!🪱🪱🪱
Rocks around the root zone seems to prevent scratching equally well.
Right from the start and all throughout, your hearty laughters and bantering are so genuine, hilarious and so relaxing and enjoyable to watch! Thank you both!!! 🐥🐥
I’m so excited for this chicken project!
Such a cute cast of characters! 🐔🐥
You could also plant fruiting shrubs and other perennials lining the yard. Mulberries and blackberries for instance. As well as annuals like sunflowers and millet. Chickens are freaking sweet.
espalier trees are a gift from the universe! I would LOVE you guys to do some espalier on the homestead!
Nice vid. A great channel for chhok-centric perma system is Edible Acres- they use logs around the base of trees to prevent chook damage, while also creating habitat for worms and bugs (they occasionally flip the logs to give the chooks access to the critters).
I did something similar for my Rhubarb plants in order to raise them off the ground level because they were suffering from crown rot. But, I used galvanized fire rings from the local farm store - they are a foot high and 3 feet diameter, so they worked perfectly.
I used a fire ring around my flag pole to make a raised flower bed... painted it black & antique gold.... turned out great!!
@@cristallaprade5487 Fortunately, chickens are smarter than humans - they don't eat anything that is toxic to them. :-) We only use the stalks of the rhubarb, and the leaves go into the compost bin where the oxalic acid breaks down and is no longer a problem.
I hope Jacques posts this on his channel too! Great idea, I wish you good luck with the chickens staying out of the trees.
Fabulous! Just this week I was thinking how incorporate a small back yard orchard with a chicken run to have double use of the space. Not being able to use the ground under closely planted fruit trees very effectively for anything else, it seemed the perfect solution rather than wasting good growing space elsewhere in the garden for a chicken run, with the chickens fertilizing the trees, keeping the weeds down, and eating any fruit that falls to the ground.
My chickens learned to jump into the fig trees for treats. So prepare to share. LOL
Oh nooooo. I’m not sharing my figs. Thank you for the info
At my homeland, that is pretty much standard. The chickens have free range of the orchard. They benefit from the dropped fruit and leaves. Though its not a design by purpose, could probably modify the system to be a bit more intentional.
I love the idea of that! My husband and I bought property a year ago and had our first small garden. We are working on a urban homestead on 1/3 of an acre. Love your channel you inspire us every more and more.
Wow, loved watching this all come together. Looks fantastic! Those’ll be some happy chooks!
Side note: the editing on this video and Kevin messing around was just hilarious!
You boys are fun to watch. This project gives a nice look to the run for sure.
I like this. I want to plant a Meyer lemon and a fig tree too. I am looking for property now, but it is expensive here and prices just keep going up. You have some great ideas. I will have to adapt them to my area.
I'm going to need an update in a month. I feel like my chickens would have unscrewed the beds and still killed the trees.
“We’ve got five more trees to put in now…” 😂
I really enjoy watching you and Jacques work together and your funny banter.
One thing about your chickens in there, is they can fly up into those trees as they grow and get out of their pen. Here we have raccoons and many other predators, so my coop run has to have a cover.
You will either have to cover the entire area with some bird netting to keep them in or you will have to trim their wings so they don't reach the lower branches of the trees and end up in your neighbor's backyard. Chickens can fly pretty high and love to roost on trees.
You two work so well together!!! I loved this video and the info. Omg I am SO going to use the wire protection for my chickens AND I think it will also stop my dog from digging and burying his stuff in my raised planters!
The chicken orchard looks great. Love the little beds around the trees. Beautiful hens.
Great project! Can't wait to see the progress....love the chickens
These came out as a lovely addition to the garden, surprisingly pretty! Thank you!
Another cool food for your chooks is a pond with duck weeds in it. Chickens love to eat duck weed.
Loved my Road Island Reds, but in country could have the Rooster. They were great garden chickens and great layers.
This turned out awesome!!! Must have updates on the orchard and of course, Chirp and her girlfriends!!!! I wish I lived in an area where I could have chickens.... would love the eggs and they are so much fun.
The intro is the exact definition of perfection 😂🐓 Love the orchard too!
Thanks Genevieve!
the chicken zoomies before Kevin walked out
We've done something similar like this in our chicken run here in San Diego as well. Still adding more dwarf trees and we used pots rather than raised beds. Just had our first harvest of mandarin and expect our first batch of grapefruit to ripen soon. We used large stones around the base so the chickens don't scratch up the roots but can still peck and poop around it without doing much damage.
One of the ads that TH-cam is running for me at the moment is one where they go "Let's invite Jacques" "Eh, let's not invite Jacques" and every time I think "Aww, but we like Jacques 🥺"
😆
I have those tree surrounds they are great, my chickens dug off the mulch on top so I've ended up putiing the wire around the tree surrounds instead of on top to keep the chickens off and protect my fruit trees.
I have 2 wild plums in chicken run! And with your inspiration I’m going to plant 2 fig trees on south/west side of chicken house! Will protect fig tree in winter, and shade for chicken house and hens!! Win/ win! I love the tiny fenced area of rotational planting of chicken crops!! Thanks guys!!
Enjoy watching you two on your projects. Love the chicken orchard. 🐔
I have this same idea to do a Chicken Orchard. My thinking was the chickens would eat or help eat bugs and worms that would get on my trees. I was going to build my coop at the far end of my orchard and then let them in the orchard a few days a week. Love this idea. Glad to see someone doing this.
You guys make such a great team!
Love the chicken orchard. don't leave their feet dangling when you hold them tho, I was always told that it maxes them anxious
Thanks for this bit of information. How to pick them up was my biggest question when I first got my chickens.
Nice sharing,love to see your video, love to see all your chicken and you guys have very creative mind. Thank you for sharing very practical video. Stay blessed and live happily 😊😊😊
Gosh I love you guys. You work and bounce off each other so well. Love the idea of the trees in your chook run. In mine I have a larger fig tree. I did try to grown some wormwood in their run. Little darlings dug around the area and tipped over the small fence around it and ate the plant. 🤣😂🤣 Australian cuddles to your girls......
It must be really cool to have the kind of boss that will help you with your projects.
I really like the galvanized tree rings. I think the native soil idea is great, if your garden is on native soil. My place is sitting on fill that was probably never provided with organic material. So I dig a well, line it with hardware cloth and weed block cloth, and then fill it 1/2 with a mix of fill / Kellogg's GroMulch, and add 2 tree fertilizer spikes at the drip line or 1/2 way from the trunk to the well edge, or thereabouts.... And then a mix of potting soil and growmulch.
Beautiful job my friend! I’ll be following this exact same method when it’s time to put my citrus 🍊 trees in the ground. Thanks for sharing!
-Calvin
Glad you enjoyed Calvin!
You never want to fertilize when transplanting trees...every tree goes thru some degree of transplant shock....adding fertilizer is like asking a Heart patient to run a Marathon...thats a no-no! Wait at least a year and then slightly fertilize depending on the quality of your soil or if the leaves indicate some kind of nutrient deficiency. Always plant the tree about an inch higher above the soil than it was in the pot. It will settle and be perfect, and never put mulch up against the trunk....spread mulch like a donut. If a tree is grafted, always ensure the graft is minimum 2 inches above the soil level. Water thoroughly (deep water) 2x per week until roots become established.
Yup, that's exactly what we said!
Thank you for sharing your place lovely garden collection lovely
Brilliant! Chicken proof garden 🪴
What a great setup…jealous of the chickens! One day, if we move, I’ll have the space to follow the Hermit’s chicken run!
This idea reminds me of what I've seen on the Edible Acres channel. It's a great way to allow forage for chickens and humans!
Brilliant idea for keeping the hawks away from the chickens. Well done!
Please post more videos with chickens!!! This video was great. I love chicken and gardening
The humour in your videos are just 🤌😘 you guys are so cute and funny, it kills me. On a more constructive note, this was my dream on my old property (but my dogs ate my chicken 😭) I think I learned it via the Syntropic Gardening method. Love your work!
I'm sorry about your chicken. 😔
Love this idea and I would love to see an update.
Another good way to protect your chickens from flying predators is to get a wooden pallet and nail 2X4 lumber to each corner for legs. This creates a cover for the hens to go under while the flying predator is scoping your hens out. This worked great for us on the Colorado prairie.
So clever! Can't wait for the forage plots!
Beautiful! Lovely birds ❤️
I have been watching many videos and following pretty closely. You guys are GREAT! And this is one of my favorite videos! Thanks for such a wonderful idea!
Functional and esthetically pleasing. Great idea!
What a great idea! Looks amazing!
I want chickens - have the room (acre) - but coyotes are so bad here in Central Texas. You can hear them howling not far away from my back porch! 😬
Here we can not only hear the Coyotes howl, we can watch them run across our property looking for rabbits, or whatever they can find.
Gotta have totally enclosed runs if you want chickens in coyote and raccoon areas (which is most parts of the US).
@@robbhays8077 Yep! My neighbors chickens got picked off from them. But they foolishly let the chickens free range all over my property and theirs - no more Clucky and Plucky and family!
@@robbhays8077 Definitely! I’m surprised that I’ve never seen a homestead channel with an enclosed run. Although fencing seems very expensive lately, so can’t blame them.
Of course he's brilliant😃 I planted fig. Kumquat several papaya n a boysen berry around the run now the chickens roam under the trees and pick at dropped fruit but I want those beds!!I just used chicken wire...
I planted figs, Moringa, marigolds, and mulberries around the outside of my chicken run... easy access to snacks for them.
Very cool! I'm planning to give our chickens a garden soon, we may throw in a couple trees now!
I have done the same. I just used large rocks around my trees though
Sweet looking orchard. Well done.
Well done Jacques! Very resourceful!