The girls found the goldmine today when they made their way over to the compost. I had put them to work earlier on a different pile of compost, eel grass and straw that I turned over by the shovelful so they could retrieve some bugs. If you have hens you know how helpful, or destructive, they can be depending on what they are scratching through. They can tear flower beds to pieces in minutes, flinging bulbs, roots and foliage through the air. It is only in their nature to dig and forage for bugs and other edibles. Since they are going to do it anyway, it does not hurt to think ahead with this and create projects for them to work on. They do a great job of sorting through and scratching compost to smaller pieces, turning the entire pile better than you could ever imagine to do with a shovel. This time of year they can scratch down through snow and ice to mud and dirt underneath. I use them to turn compost,   start working on the garden soil and aerate and scratch up areas for planting new grass seed in the spring. They have done a great job on our vast patches of moss behind the house. I had simply accepted the moss and was even starting to embrace it when I noticed that the chickens had improved the soil conditions greatly. I threw down some grass and clover seed and now have a nicer patch of lawn where the moss once dominated. We will not be able to leave the girls on the garden much longer since prolonged time on the garden inevitably means unsanitary droppings. We usually kick them off after the snow melts and usually till around the first of April planting shortly after tilling, about 1-2 weeks. Lots of people will allow their chickens to stay on their garden longer with no ill effects,  I just have no interest in pushing health boundaries.  We often compost our chicken manure with our kitchen scraps. We pasteurize all the compost in black garbage bags in the cold frame during really hot days before using it on our gardens.  

Chicken tracks in the garden.