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On Thu, 02 Oct 2003 15:42:46 +0200, martin wrote:
Anybody who has ever kept free range chickens will know that after a
while nothing grows in the chicken run except AFAIR nettles.

How do people think fruit trees would put up with being inside a
chicken run? I'm trying to think of the ways to make the best use of
the land we've got and one option is to overlay the fruit tree area
and the chickens.

Chickens do a lot of scratching and dustbathing in bare earth runs.
Dustbaths make a hole up to 6" deep and a foot wide. That would uncover
and dry out shallow roots of blackcurrants gooseberries and raspberries
(anyway hens will jump high enough to get the fruit). Fruit trees like
plums damsons and cherries tend to sucker from roots which have been
damaged.

You might look up deep-litter pens, where the floor of the run is
covered with a layer of straw (at least a foot thick iirc, and the
bottom of the run needs walls to contain it). Lady Something used to
promote that post-war but afaik it went out of fashion, possibly because
it encouraged rats around the henhouse.

Janet.