Our Chicken Tunnels, Coop, and Run Setup around the Garden

Chicken chunnels are a great option for a gardener with chickens. Here's our setup, including the chicken coop, chicken run, and chicken tunnels around two sides of our large garden area. Chickens are great for weed control and pest control for our gardens, and here's a way to help them work for you while keeping them safe. Plus, chunnels are a perfect way to "free range" chickens without the risk of actually free ranging them or the daily effort of moving chickens daily with a chicken tractor. Win-win for the time-strapped gardener!

More resources:

Beginner's Garden Podcast Episodes (and blog posts) on Chickens in the Garden --

[u.s.militia]

I’ve got a friend who literally lets his chickens and rabbits free range in his garden. I have no idea why they don’t eat his garden but they don’t. They only eat the bugs and weeds. He lets them out everyday and then they go back to their hutches every night. It’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen.

[DataSmithy]

Keeping weeds down around fencing is actually a regular problem in gardening, since weeding tools often get caught in the fencing, and may damage fencing over time. Making chicken tunnels around the garden seems like a great way to reduce perimeter weeds, and feed the chickens at the same time.

[Spiffelight]

I'm sitting in my apartment in Stockholm, being an operating technician, scribbling down tips from you if I ever just - dump it all and move out into a place where I can have chickens… Lovely garden and setup!

[kagnewmp]

Great looking garden and chicken tunnels. I remember many years ago my Dad was having lots of trouble with the Fox and Coyotes coming in at night walking off with a chicken sometimes. He found that they would dig under the fence to get them so what he did was dig out the entire area for a new pen and he buried heavy duty chicken wire under 3 inches of dirt and reseeded it before building the new pen where the buried wire connected to the wire running up the walls. Those Fox and Coyotes tried many times to dig under the pen but were stopped each time they ran into that buried wire and left a little blood when they couldn't dig through it.

[chrishancock]

One of the best ways of incorporating chickens into your vegetable garden is to open up your old beds to the chickens on a rotating schedule. The set up I saw had 6 identical circular beds with domed moveable chicken coop that fit over the beds. The vegetable beds had a rotating planting schedule, every time a bed reached the end of it's productivity, the coop was moved, the chickens had a feast and cleared the bed of weeds and pests, added fertiliser and dug the ground over. When the coop moved to its next bed, the result was a lovely rich bed to sow the next round of crops.

I thought you could try something similar, having a moveable cage that connects to your chicken run when you're ready for the chickens to let rip in your beds when they're at the end of their season...

[scubaguy]

I will never forget the first time I saw a chicken eat a mouse. 🤯 Then, before I could even vocalize my shock it grabbed another mouse and just slurped it down. I was blown away! 😳

[dachsymom]

Great video! Love you chicken tunnels! I've never had those I garden the way my Mama taught me. Our chickens free range with me every evening after work in warm weather, about 8 months out of the year where i live. I work in the garden and they scratch and peck at the bugs and weeds I throw them. I have a combination of raised beds, some gravel in between and ground plantings. My method is to put up chicken wire when everything is getting started. Everthing gets it...in the ground and on top of the raised beds and the chickens learn this area is off limits with discouraging hand claps and shooing as well. When I take down the chicken wire 2-3 weeks later they pretty much leave everything alone. If they come near the plants I give them the Southern Mama "AANNT" and they turn right around. This training time is worth it because they really keep bug/pest populations in check. Bugs are more destructive. I have some stumps, perches for them too in the garden. I also have 3 compost piles on the ground that they love. They turn it for me and get lots of worms as a treat and added bonus for me they add some chicken poo to the compost. Chickens can be in the garden free ranging successfully you just have to set boundaries with them. Just like with EVERTHING, without boundaries destruction will follow.

[Vince-mlgw]

Awesome! We live in Grizzly bear country and chickens are a big attraction for them. This coops compounds etc are should have heavy duty electric fencing. A safety note of the t-posts. I like to use a tennis ball to cover the exposed top end. Cut a small hole and just pop it on. If you want a muted color just spray paint it. The reason for the ball is to prevent becoming impaled on it should you trip and fall onto the post. Love your channel!

[tanyaparker-callsign.kkic]

New chicken farmer here...this is the second video that I’ve seen with chicken tunnels...love the idea great space saver plus the chickens can run and jump in their coop area. Awesome and thank you for sharing. I’m getting ideas on having a tunnel throughout our backyard for them to free range. ✊🏾❤️❤️❤️✊🏾

[wookiejesusofnazarethkashy]

Congratulations on your setup. You look set for the coming food shortages. Thanks for the free advice. I'll give you some back in return. Those black streaks on your roof are a bacteria called Gloeocapsa Magma and they eat the limestone and other minerals found in modern shingles. If you let it continue it can take 10 years off the life of your roof. I'd charge around $500 to $750 to clean your roof, but you or your husband can do it just like a professional by spraying a mix of bleach and either Dawn Ultra dish soap or Gain laundry detergent to help the bleach stick to the roof better. We use a big 12v pump and specialized sprayers and soaps, but a 2 gallon pump sprayer will do the job. Take straight household laundry bleach and a couple of tablespoons of soap and mix it in the sprayer and pump it up and spray directly on any parts that have the black growth. Get it good and wet and then let it sit. The rain will rinse it away after a few good downpours. Make sure you wear a good quality mask and goggles and try to do it on a calm overcast day. After a rain or 2 you can go back up and hit the spots that didn't quite die off if there are any. If you have sunglasses with polarized lenses you can see which areas will need additional spraying while you are doing the work. You can also use liquid pool shock and dilute it down 50/50 with water so it's around the same strength as regular bleach. It's a bit more economical that way since pool shock is 10% or 12.5% sodium hypochlorite as opposed to the typical laundry bleach which is around 5%. Pool shock usually costs a dollar or 2 more per gallon than laundry bleach, but goes twice as far. Make sure your bleach is at least 5% and fresh. It gets weaker over time. 8 gallons of pool shock should do the trick from what I could see of your roof.

I hope to see a clean roof on your house in a future video.

[keywestpuma]

Your husband did an awesome job building the chicken pen, great ideas for the yard birds and your garden. love it!

[jontuscher]

That's a good idea. And you can always change the shape of the tunnel if you wanted to give the chickens new scratching area and let the old areas rejuvenate.

[nathaniellarson]

We have lots of hawks, eagles, turkey vultures, and a few owls around our place. It is common for us to see up to 5 Bald Eagles at one time in a couple of our trees. We moved last summer and our chickens stayed at our old house. We used to let our chickens out in the yard, but at this new place I think the new chicks we got this spring will just be lunch! I'll build a big run, lol.

[hotartesian]

I can't wait to try this system in some of my gardens. I usually have to stop allowing my birds free range from mid-April to Sept. because they WILL scratch everything to smithereens and help themselves to anything they like. It is bad enough to have pheasants and quail dust bathing in the corn and squash, but they have taught the chickies to jump up for corn and other small grains, and I can forget about having lettuce and peas. This seems like a good plan to keep the chickens busy where I want them, and they will love the grasshoppers and weeds I scare up.

[boprosplumbing]

Awesome, I'm sold, I bet this will be a god-send for dealing with my 2 annual grasshopper infestations. Soon as the rains get here thousands of grasshoppers from the fields swarm my gardens and landscapes.

[BUDSBEAU]

this is such a smart set up for ANYONE to have if you own chickens !! good job !

[tuppy]

great coop set up, you've clearly thought that through.

[coliledlamini]

I watched some time ago, plus 6 months back and today i just received funding for my little chicken project. Thank you so much for the inspiration.

[DMAneoth]

Love that tunnel Brilliant! Thank you.
Until a couple years ago I had 70 plus hens and roosters that free ranged during the days and that included our garden. At night they went to their assigned roosts themselves (three separate roosts pens) as they were trained to do.

They ate plenty of bugs of course and some plants were damaged but mostly they went at the weeds. We did not loose enough veggie plants to stop them from free ranging.

[hissonshinegirl]

You are very lucky, no ground predators. Pieces of wood just stuffed under the chicken tunnel gaps wouldn't stop a possum raccoon or a wild hog. let along a neighbor's dog. Also, To keep the girlz eggs clean I have their roost area away from the nesting box ...looks as though your girls have to walk right through their poop from the roost area in front of the nest box. just my 2cents from grandma :)
BEST WISHES !!