Above: garden bed fenced against digging chickens.
Chickens are both predators and prey: you have to protect them from ending up in the belly of a fox, but you also have to protect your garden from your chickens eating whatever is in their sight, or just turning your lovingly made flower bed into a dust bath.
Read more in my latest Mother Earth News post:
“We free range, which of course exacerbates the losses to predators, but the overall pros of free ranging are so evident that I truly believe it’s the only practical way for us to keep chickens. Not only do we save a bundle on feed as our chickens forage and find their own food, but we get the benefit of a pest free yard and can get away with a smaller coop – it’s OK for chickens to be a little crowded some of the time if they mostly have the whole yard to themselves.”
Domestic Felicity 
Anna, I hope you had a great Pesach.
Have you seen this article?
Grow Food for Chickens in Your Own Backyard, http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/poultry/food-for-chickens-zm0z16amzkin. It may help to keep your precious birds away from your herbs and other food for the house — and this from a city girl (not me. I wish I were in a position to take her advice!).
Or does your homestead already include clovers, grains or vetches the author there says chickens love?
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Thanks for the link, Chava! I’ll have to check it out. In general we don’t grow anything specifically for the chickens, but they have a lot of space to root around, as well as access to the compost pile.
Our holidays were busy but good, like every year! It looks better in retrospect 😉
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Just saying, this was a great article and I hope the above was helpful, even just a little. Shabbat shalom!
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