We hatched 4 ducks last summer hoping they would do wonders in the garden, I too had read all good things about the benefits. Our ducks are runner/khaki's, they are terrible in the garden, not as destructive as the chickens but not the wonderful "helpers" we had hoped for. They trampled our cukes and squash plants. Just my experience though. -Sheila

Melissia, I fence off places I don't want them to go. For ornamental beds, I use 2' or 3' tall wood stakes and either chicken wire or the green plastic fencing sometimes sold to keep small animals out of gardens. It works pretty well with the chickens, but the guineas can fly over fences. I don't especially like the look of the wire fencing around my flower beds, but our house is about 300' back from the road, so no one sees it except us and people who come to our home. Last year, I removed the chicken wire from the flower bed in May or June, once the flowers were large enough that the chickens couldn't dig them up, and all they did was occasionally dig in the mulch. In general, our chickens prefer digging in mulch to digging in dirt, so they really aren't as destructive as long as they have a lot of bark mulch in which they can do their digging and scratching. The exception is that, in our narrow band of sandy soil, they love, love, love to dustbathe, but that's OK because that's where we put the chicken coop (for that reason). They also do like to commandeer any flower pot or flower box they spot and then turn them into nesting boxes. Of course, they have nesting boxes in the coop but why use those if you can dig up the flowers and take over those boxes instead? To keep them out of flower pots, I put a round ring of chicken wire in the pot, between the pot and the soil, prior to planting. Because it is anchored deeply in the pot, they can't dig and scratch around it and dig up the chiken wire. Sometimes they go over the top of the chicken wire and get into the pot anyway. You can prevent that by wiring together the chicken wire several inches over the top of the plant. Usually, the chickens are more of a problem with flower pots in the winter when there's not much of interest going on in the landscape. As far as the veggie garden, it has a 7' tall fence which keeps the chickens out as long as we remember to close the gate. The guineas fly over the fence at times, but they have not been destructive in the garden as long as they have plenty of water elsewhere. Otherwise, they'll peck tomatoes to get water. I do love to open the gate and let "the girls" into the garden from time to time. They are great at keeping bugs under control and really don't bother the crops. In the spring, when I am tilling up or digging up a bed, I let them in to pick out all the bugs they can find in the soil. They are, of course, happy campers at that point. They are never allowed in the garden when I am waiting for seeds to sprout or when I have tiny seedlings that they could easily dig up. Before we turned our 3' tall garden fence into a 7' tall garden fence, the chickens spent a lot more time in the garden and so did the guineas. In fact, they were in there so often (mostly because I left the gate open all day long) that the bobcats would come sit in the garden and wait for a chicken to show up. Since we put up the taller fence and I began leaving the gate closed, neither bobcats nor chickens (nor deer!) spend much if any time in the garden. Dawn

Woo Hoo! I have a list of chicks I would like to add to our flock. Thanks for the info.

I was really surprised looking at a Principles of Poultry Science book on the subject of age and production. Researchers kept laying hens until they were 140 weeks old. Most of the laying hens in the "food industry" are lucky to make it to 60 weeks of age . . . considering the conditions, maybe lucky isn't the right word. They molted (lost some feathers & stopped producing eggs) twice during this time. But they come back from this, actually more quickly after that second molt. Not surprisingly, their best performance was in that first laying period where they started at close to 100% each day and just dropped a little below 80%. But, their second laying period started at nearly 90% and dropped to about 70%. What is surprising to me is that in their 3rd year, they kept their daily production above 60% - more than an egg every other day?! This is from production hens that are supposed to burn out quickly, suffer from osteoporosis and all sorts of other problems. Egg quality actually improved for the older hens. The pullet has 3600 to 4000 miniature ova from the get-go. They will only produce about 270 eggs under industrial conditions. I did a rough, conservative calculation of the hens in the study (at 70% production during 112 weeks over their 140 weeks). They've produced 550 eggs . . . The fact that the industry only allows them 60 months of life is because the profit margins are so low. Mostly, they are trying to keep the birds at a high rev for a brief period and wouldn't tolerate a 30% drop in production from an "old" hen. digitS'