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I have a large fruit and veg garden. At the present my four aylesburys have it to themselves as the hens are in their run. My problen is that the ducks appear to be unable to help themselves from going into the bed that contains garlic and shallots and trampling the lot whilst dibbling in the soil. There are numerous other beds with other veg growing in them but theyre not bothered about them. Theres also about 1/4 acre of grass but its not as attractive as my poor shallots. Does anyone else have ducks that do this.? Ive put chicken wire around the bed but they still get in and do more trampling cos they cant get out! Will my garlic and shallots ever recover

I have a similar problem - my hens always seem to find a way into the garden (since I put up a high net fence to keep them out they have learnt to walk all the way through a two acre paddock, squeeze under the gate, walk down a track to the main road, and then walk along and squeeze under the front gate!). there they will dig up all of my flowers and lettuces (they dont eat anything, just rip it all up and kill everything) and need a couple of slices of bread as a sufficient reward for walking back into the paddock.

all I can suggest is to make a net cover over your onions and garlic. drive two fence posts into the ground either side of the bed, attach a piece of thick rope between the two and hang a piece of net across and peg it down at the edge of the beds like a tent. you then have to drape more over the ends to cover the gaps at the sides. we use this to keep the hens out of our main veg patch (with carrots, beetroot, more lettuce and spring onions - I know its limited, but we just started). ours leave the veg alone, although its a bit of a tangle when you yourself try to go in to see to things!

oh well - garlic is meant to be very healthy for birds, and can prevent some health problems.

I'd suggest thicker fence wire, the plastic covered wire type. I have it all round my veg patch and it is about 5 foot high.

It's also around various shrubs now too as the ducks have been nibbling them, and flower seedlings because the hens scratch them up when I let them free range!

I removed the chicken wire and draped some green netting over some hoops I made out of some sticks and old hose pipe. They havent been back on that bed since. I left the excess netting on the floor around the bed with some big stones on to weigh it down - I think because of the nature of the netting they cant see where it begins and ends and dont want to get tangled in it! Its a much cheaper solution that chicken wire - I wonder if it would keep the hens off too? I doubt it - theyd just flutter up and land on it - squash it down - then eat what they wanted anyway !!!