Free Guide · Growing Berries With Chickens
Three things decide whether berries survive in a chicken run, and the first one happens where you cannot see it.
Can you grow berries in a chicken run? Yes, but only if you protect the new canes at the base. Chickens prune every fresh shoot before it can climb, so a ring of chicken wire around the bottom of each plant is what decides whether the plant lives or quietly gives up. Once the canes are past pecking height, train the arms up along the roof and the fruit is yours.
In Chicken City, my integrated chicken coop, veggie garden, fruit orchard and compost system all under one roof, I have berries growing in a huge flush right along the wall of the run. I do not weed them. I do not fertilise them. The chickens do both of those jobs for me, and I still get the harvest.
It is such an easy system that I genuinely do not understand why more people are not doing it. But there are a couple of things you have to get right, and if you get them wrong you will end up with dead berry plants very quickly. That was me when I first started out, so this guide is the version I wish someone had handed me.
Watch
Come into the berry room with me
I take you down to the base of the plants where the whole trick lives, then show you the trained arms and the blackberry that grows in from outside the run.
First, be honest about your sun
My berry room is in full sun. Standing up where the canes are, the light is strong, and that is doing a lot of the work here. I would rather tell you that up front than have you spend a season on it and blame yourself.
Before you start
If your chicken coop sits in a dark or shady corner of the garden, this probably will not work. If you have decent sun, you can use it. Everything below assumes the sun is there.
One more thing worth saying, because the photos can be misleading. The greater Chicken City structure is big, but the berry room specifically is small enough that pretty much anyone could do it in a back garden. You are not looking at something that needs an acre.
Your berries are not dying. They are being pruned.
This is the part almost nobody is told, and it is why so many people conclude that berries and chickens simply do not mix.
A berry plant does not grow upward from an existing trunk the way a fruit tree does. It sends up brand new canes from the base, plenty of them, right through spring and summer. Those canes start soft and green and low, which is to say they start at exactly chicken height.
So the girls wander past and take the top off. Then they do it again to the next one. The cane never gets the length or the height to climb up and over and away from them, and after enough of that the plant gives up. From the outside it looks like the plant failed. It did not. It was being quietly haircut every time it tried.
Also on the channel
Chickens first, or plants first?
The question I get asked most by people starting from scratch, and the answer changes how you set the whole thing up.
Job one: protect the base, not the fruit
The fix is almost embarrassingly simple. Take plain chicken wire from the hardware store and give it a ring around the base of the plant.
New shoots then come up through the middle of that ring, get past pecking height, and from that point they are safe. That is the whole magic trick, and it happens down in the understory where you would never think to look.
Some canes still poke through the wire and get eaten, and honestly I am not sad about it. Berries can be a very weedy plant, so a bit of natural control from the chickens is doing me a favour. The low leaves they peck at are food and entertainment for them, and everyone in the system is getting their needs met at once.
Job two: keep the arms above their heads
Here is where people who got job one right still lose the crop. You can grow a magnificent plant and then hand every berry on it straight to the chickens.
Berry canes throw long, wavy arms, and those arms want to arch over and head back down towards the ground. That puts the fruit right back in reach. So they get trained. I tie them to the roof of the run and keep training them up and along as they grow.
There is a standalone blackberry in one of my veggie patch rooms that shows this better than the berry room does, because the berry room is so full now you cannot really see how any of it is structured. On that one you can see the arms tied up and trailed along, and there is enough clearance that the chickens can probably reach the very bottom layer, but that is all they get.
When a fresh cane comes up, and that cane is next year's blackberries, I just train it up the same way using the supports that are already there. It takes a minute and then it is done. Keep everything up off the ground and the fruit is safe, the chickens have their shade underneath, and I get to harvest.
Job three, and the easiest of the lot: plant it outside
If all of that sounds like more than you want to take on, there is a version that skips the hardest part entirely. Do not plant the berry inside the run at all.
There is a gate between my chicken courtyard and the veggie patch, and I planted a blackberry on the far side of it specifically so the chickens could not get at it. For you at home that might mean planting outside the chicken run completely. Then, as the wavy arms grew, they threaded themselves through into the run. I did not even do that on purpose. Plants have their own way of going about these things.
The base and all the new growth stay out of reach, so there is nothing to protect and nothing to build, and only the fruiting arms come inside.
What you get back
This is the part that makes the whole thing worth doing, and it goes well beyond the berries.
No weeding and no fertilising. The chickens are down there all day scratching, and between the scratching and what they leave behind, both jobs are covered. I have never done either under my berry crops.
The wild birds do not get them. The netting over the run is there to keep my chickens safe, but it keeps other birds out too. That means the berries growing in there are berries we actually get to eat, which anyone who has lost a crop overnight will appreciate.
Nothing rots on the ground. Fruit falls, as it naturally does, and instead of spoiling it gets found and eaten almost immediately. That is good for the health of the garden, and it is fun, enrichment and better health for the chickens.
The birds get the best spot in the run. Standing up top where the canes are it is hot and bright. Duck down underneath and it is a cool oasis through the warmer months. Chickens are forest dwellers at heart and overhead cover is what makes them feel safest, so that shaded understory is genuinely a chicken's paradise.
The other thing they hand over, of course, is eggs. There is no chicken in my No-Chicken Chicken Salt, which feels like the right way round when you keep them as pets rather than as dinner, and it is very good on a fresh one.
Alyce's Favourite
All the flavour, none of the chicken
Alyce's Organic No-Chicken Chicken Salt
Organic, made in small batches, and very good on a fresh egg.
Shop the No-Chicken Chicken SaltWhat goes wrong
The plant sits there and does nothing
Look at the base, not the top. If you find short, blunt-ended stumps where new canes should be, they are being pruned. Ring the base with wire and the next flush will get away.
Healthy plant, no fruit
The arms have arched back down into reach. Tie them up along the roof and keep training each new one as it comes.
A few canes still get eaten
Expect that, and let it go. Anything that sticks out through the wire may come to a demise. Berries are vigorous enough that a bit of chicken pruning is not a loss.
Leggy growth and very little fruit
Come back to the sun question. A shady run is the one thing on this list that no amount of wire will fix.
Frequently asked questions
Will chickens eat berry plants?
They will eat the new canes and any fruit they can reach, and the canes are the real problem. Protect the base with wire and keep the fruiting arms above head height and the plant is fine.
Do I need to fertilise berries in a chicken run?
I never have. The chickens scratching and living underneath handle the feeding and the weeding between them.
When do berries send up new canes?
Through spring and summer, and there are usually plenty of them. That is the window when the wire matters most, because that is when the chickens have something to prune.
Can I grow berries in a small chicken run?
Yes. My berry room is a small part of a big structure, and it is the part I think almost anyone could copy in a back garden. Sun matters far more than square metres.
Do wild birds get the fruit?
Not in mine. The netting that keeps the chickens safe from above keeps other birds off the berries, which is one of the quiet advantages of growing fruit inside a run rather than out in the open garden.
Building your own version of this?
I have been refining Chicken City for over ten years and I share what works, what failed, and what I would do differently. Come along for the rest of it.
More from Chicken City
Growing Berries and Keeping Chickens is the full tour of the berry room as a whole system, including how the chickens are housed, fed and watered in there.
Simple tricks to protect plants from chickens applies the same protect-the-roots-not-the-leaves thinking to everything else growing in the run.
How to grow raspberries covers summer and autumn fruiting varieties and why winter is the time to get them in the ground.
Chicken City, the details has the structure, the design thinking and rough plans if you want to build something like it yourself.
Watch next
The whole food forest, not just the berries
The berries are one room. This one walks through the entire food forest growing inside the chicken run and how the layers work together.
