This mother hen has learned that the way to the potato patch and vegetable fields is through the road. The fields are protected by a six foot high fence from the rest of the property, but there is only a four foot high fence facing the driveway.

By taking the chicks out into the driveway, she can walk to the potato patch, fly up to the fence and jump down, while her chicks wriggle through the wire fence. So we’re needing to quickly redo the fence between the vegetable fields and the driveway to keep this hen and her chicks out.

This is one determined mother hen. Once I shoo her out of the vegetable fields, it doesn’t take her long to walk her chicks four hundred feet through the woods around the vegetable fields and back out onto the driveway.

Chickens love potatoes. They will scratch through the dirt and once they find them, will quickly devour them. Last year we lost many beds of potatoes to the chickens. This year we are keeping them. The vegetables, they don’t eat that much, but they will destroy entire vegetable beds digging for worms and bugs.

Maybe next year I should just plant potatoes in various places where the chickens roam, so they will leave the potato patch alone.