Country Life
' By IAN NIALL HOW quickly even a small number of hens can reduce the weeds and greenstuff on a large area of ground! At the cottage, where a dozen or so hens are having free range over the much-too-large kitchen garden, the weeds and grasses that were always so hard to keep down have been reduced until, by comparison with this time last year, the ground seems bare. Even in winter there was always a heavy covering of valeriah and other things that never seem to die off. I can think of nothing better than fowls for keeping down mixed growth unless one takes to harbouring goats. Geese are good croppers of grass, but I am not sure that they would fancy other herbs, and they would never pick up the seeds and insects that the hens do. The ground is being cleared, cleaned and manured all at once, while the egg production cannot help but be assisted by this addition to a diet of corn and pellets.
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