I’ve just spent a couple of hours repairing last week’s chicken damage after the ravening creatures escaped from their run and trashed two of my salad beds. The little gem lettuces were hearting up nicely and the red cocarde loose leaf variety were just about ready for me to start taking off a few leaves when they got well and truly stomped on. The chickens haven’t actually eaten very much, but it had just rained and the ground was very soft so they went mad scratching for worms and things. After being replanted and a few days of rain, they’re starting to look a bit less stunned and put out some tentative growth.
Elsewhere, they scratched though several patches of just about germinating baby leaf salad and some other salad leaves that I’ve been cropping for about a month. The the established leaves should recover and the almost seedlings seem to be carrying on germinating, albeit with a few bald patches so I’ve resown those and scattered some compost over them.
Some patches, however, were past rescuing, so I’ve dug them up and resown completely. Hopefully, if the weather picks up, they should be putting lightening growth at this time of the year. The irony of it is that the mangled ones I’ve dug up ended up being fed to the chickens - you’d almost think they’d planned it
