Keeping Chickens in a Cottage Garden Setting

A Cottage Garden Made for Hens

Few things finish a cottage garden better than a couple of hens scratting about under the apple trees. They take slugs, leatherjackets and weed seedlings, turn kitchen scraps into eggs, and give you a muck heap worth more than any bag of fertiliser. Left to themselves, though, the same birds will shred a bed of primroses in an afternoon, dust-bathe in the middle of your dianthus and leave a trail across the flagstones. The answer is not to fight them but to arrange the plot so hens and plants each have their own patch — and to be willing to move the boundaries as the seasons turn.

Two or three hybrids or a small flock of bantams are plenty for a typical cottage plot. Any more and the grass simply cannot recover.

Housing That Keeps Them Safe

A henhouse needs to be weatherproof, dry underfoot and well ventilated above the birds' heads, but free of draughts at perch height. Above all, it must be fox-proof. A vixen will dig under a run in minutes, so either sink weldmesh at least 30cm below the soil around the perimeter, or lay a skirt of mesh flat on the ground, peg it down and let the grass grow through it. A covering of netting or mesh above the run keeps sparrowhawks out and stops your best layer from flitting over the fence.

• Space: roughly one square metre of floor per bird in the house, and 25cm of perch each.
• Nest boxes: one between every three or four hens, lined with chopped straw or hemp bedding.
• Base: stand the house on paving slabs or a firm gravel apron. It drains better, is easier to sweep and discourages rats.
• Ventilation: high-level slots or a louvred panel, never a gap at bird height.

Clean out weekly, and give the house a thorough scrub and a coat of mite treatment each spring and autumn.

Dust Baths and Daily Comfort

A dust bath is not a treat, it is how a hen keeps on top of lice and red mite. Give them a shallow tray, an old tyre or a corner of the run filled with a mix of dry sieved soil, sharp sand and a couple of handfuls of wood ash from the stove. Site it where it will stay dry — under the overhang of the house or in a small roofed box — and refresh it every month or so. Birds will queue up for it, fluffing themselves into small craters and emerging quite transformed.

Water should be in a galvanised drinker kept out of the sun, and checked twice a day in July and August. Feed layers' pellets ad lib in a hanging hopper, and suspend a cabbage or a wire basket of greens at head height so the birds have something to peck at that isn't your seedlings.

Shady Runs and Sheltered Corners

Hens cope far better with frost than with a run that bakes in July. Use the garden's own structure: the north side of a hedge, the shade of a plum or apple tree, the cool wall of a stone outbuilding. Draped netting over a run will cut the worst of the sun as well as deter hawks, and a few leafy shrubs at the edge give the birds somewhere to retreat when a buzzard passes over.

If you can, work two or three runs in rotation on grass, moving the house and fencing every week or fortnight. Longer grass is fine; bare, poached mud is not, as it soon turns sour and wormy. A movable ark on the lawn does the same job for two or three bantams and leaves a patch of neatly manured ground behind it.

Movable Fences to Save Your Beds

The single most useful piece of kit in a cottage garden is a set of lightweight movable fences. Willow or hazel hurdles, plastic mesh stapled to batten frames, or weldmesh panels about 1.2m by 0.9m all work well. Push them into the soil, link them with hooks or twine, and you can ring-fence a bed in a couple of minutes and take it down again just as fast.

• Fence the beds, not the hens — it is far less work.
• Keep barriers around 90cm high and pin them firmly, so a scratching hen cannot push underneath.
• Cover soft new growth with netting until plants are established; after that, most perennials are safe enough.
• Clip one wing of each bird once a year after the moult if any are inclined to fly; it takes seconds and does no harm.
• Run hens over empty vegetable beds in winter — they will clear pests and weed seed and leave the ground ready for a fork-over in spring.

Feed, Water and a Few Good Breeds

Traditional breeds suit a cottage garden beautifully. Buff Orpingtons are placid and heavy, Light Sussex are reliable layers, Barnevelders are quiet and pretty. For a small plot, bantams are ideal: Pekins and Silkies barely fly at all, though Silkies need a dry, sheltered run because their plumage holds water. Hybrids will lay hardest of all, but pure breeds tend to live longer and cause less trouble.

Keep a simple routine — let them out after breakfast, a quick headcount and drinker check at midday, shut them in at dusk. Do that, and the hens will do most of the gardening for you: the beds stay intact, the slugs disappear, and there is nothing quite like a warm egg brought in on a cold morning.