Bad idea to plant raspberries at coop perimeter?

I’m planning to get chickens and will be establishing a garden for them for several reasons. On a neighboring property there is a huge thicket of raspberry brambles. I have thought considerably how that would make a fantastic chicken habitat.

If I plant some raspberries to grow and intertwine on one side of my coop, will I regret it? How likely would it be that I need to repair that side of the coop and have to fight thorny canes?

Do you happen to have a picture of the area you have in mind?

I think you MAY be okay, depending on if the raspberry brambles can be grabbed by one of the chickens. My chickens enjoy playing the game of "What can I yank through the hardware cloth" with anything that comes up against their fences in run.

They are little terrors and I love them however haha.

I wouldn't plant thorny plants most places.
Raspberry also come in thornless varieties, I would go with those instead.
The feed/fodder value of fruiting plants alongside a chicken run is probably minimal.
I would still do it , for their comfort.

Timothy Norton wrote:Do you happen to have a picture of the area you have in mind?

I think you MAY be okay, depending on if the raspberry brambles can be grabbed by one of the chickens. My chickens enjoy playing the game of "What can I yank through the hardware cloth" with anything that comes up against their fences in run.

They are little terrors and I love them however haha.

I don’t have the coop up yet, but it will be going around this fig tree and native sedge. I sprinkled seeds around the fig (alpine strawberry, fava beans, and allysum) and I am building a hugelculture for more fodder.

William Bronson wrote: I wouldn't plant thorny plants most places.
Raspberry also come in thornless varieties, I would go with those instead.
The feed/fodder value of fruiting plants alongside a chicken run is probably minimal.
I would still do it , for their comfort.

I was thinking that the thorns would impede predators considering breaking and entering. And there is long-standing precedent of raspberry leaves’ medicinal value for reproductive-aged women. Some think raspberry leaves benefit reproduction in other species as well - including laying hens.

https://www.traditionalmedicinals.com/blogs/herb-library/raspberry-leaf

A few thoughts, and take them with a grain of salt because I'm very new to this.

I don't like planting right up against my chicken run for two reasons. I use a anti-predator skirt of hardware cloth flat against the ground outside the run that sticks out about two feet. This is 'buried' with wood chips to disguise it and allow me to notice if anything starts digging. I don't put plants near it so it can be inspected/repaired if the time comes. A kind of perimeter maintenance.

Chickens can be fed raspberries, I just worry about maintaining the spread/clumping that those berries can do. If you don't mind the occasional maintenance I don't think it would be an issue. Thorns might be a problem, but I really don't know! -Edit- I didn't even think of the raspberry leaves! I need more coffee. I have a ton of blackberries.... ohh a new idea!

I do grow a few things for fodder. Bocking 4 comfrey has been planted downhill of the chicken run. My idea is that if there is ANY runoff from their run (which shouldn't, but who knows with heavy rain) that it can be reuptake by the comfrey. I also am experimenting with planting amaranth and other heavy seed headed forage plants.  I am doing them away from the run with the hopes to bring cuttings to the chickens. They really can do a number to any greenier around them if they are confined and not shifted in like a paddock system.

I have a bunch of wild henbit that I'm musing on how to utilize.

How many chickens are you hoping to have? (Beware of chicken math! It is real!!!)

I'm excited for you

Timothy Norton wrote:I don't like planting right up against my chicken run for two reasons. I use a anti-predator skirt of hardware cloth flat against the ground outside the run that sticks out about two feet. This is 'buried' with wood chips to disguise it and allow me to notice if anything starts digging. I don't put plants near it so it can be inspected/repaired if the time comes. A kind of perimeter maintenance.

Exactly why I asked, thanks! If I plant raspberries on the *inside* of the perimeter would it be any better?

Timothy Norton wrote:How many chickens are you hoping to have? (Beware of chicken math! It is real!!!)

I’ve worked out on paper that I need to maintain 50 to feed my mother and myself; but I’m going to have to start small as I plan to produce most of my own fodder and supply as little commercial feed as possible.

I love my raspberries, but be advised they will assimilate a chicken coop in no time. The line must be drawn here! This far, no farther!

I would think again about what you put at the margin of the chicken run.

Whatever you plant will be getting a huge dose of nitrogen, as the roots will spread under the chicken run and soak it up.
Raspberries will survive and thrive on a diet of compost and mulch. Even in very leached-out soil, I've had raspberries taller than 8 ft by mulching them with chunks screened out of half-done compost, seaweed, and leaves, with no other fertilizer.. Wood chips are another great mulch. Brambles like raspberries like a forest-type soil heavy on woody debris and fungi. Will Bonsall's invaluable book shows blackberrys taller than a shed roof, given nothing but wood chips.

What I'm getting at is that raspberries don't need that nitrogen-rich position. In fact, too much nitrogen may give you lots of leaves and not much fruit Or fruit that rots as soon as it ripens.

Any  fruit or flower crop will bear better when given a lot of potassium and phosphorus, but not so much nitrogen. Tomatoes and nasturtiums are classic example of this effect--they make lots of leaves but few flowers or fruit when given too much nitrogen. Root crops like nitrogen even less--it makes them forked, hairy, and prone to rot.

Crops that need nitrogen are the leaf and stem crops. Note that onion bulbs are leaf bases, not roots. And tubers like potatoes are actually stems, not roots. Both love nitrogen.

Trees are an exception to the rule. They can use a lot of nitrogen to make fast growth of their stems and branches, which then provides more fruiting sites. My chicken run hosts a plum tree which provides shade for the hens in summer, and fallen fruit for them to eat. In the fall, I put down a tarp and shake the plums down onto it, for drying or jam. Mulberries fall continuously rather than in a single harvest. They are loved by chickens, and can be another good choice for around the run. They bear on new wood, so you can cut them back without sacrificing the fruit. In the long run, the tree may not live as long as one raised under leaner conditions, but it started bearing 2 or 3 years earlier than usual, and bears heavy crops of good fruit.

A possibility I wouldn't overlook is to grow annuals that provide seeds for your hens. Unlike cows, sheep, etc, chickens are primarily seed-eaters, not leaf-eaters. Sunflowers, corn, millet, and sorghum are all big plants that can make a big crop with little fuss, and are loved by chickens. The extra nitrogen will delay cropping a bit, but you should still get nutrient-rich seeds for your flock. Also, being annuals, they won't make a permanent network of roots that keep you from removing the manure when you want to use it. Wapsie Valley Corn is a great choice for an open-pollinated feed corn extremely high in protein. https://www.quailseeds.com/store/p396/Wapsie_Valley_Dent_Corn.html

Sorghum has the additional recommendation of being drought-tolerant. https://www.quailseeds.com/store/p89/Ellen%27s_Red_Sorghum.html

And the protein in sunflowers makes chickens lay more eggs, so I'd include them in the mix. The black-seeded sunflowers used for oil and birdseed is the most prolific and useful for poultry. https://www.quailseeds.com/store/p141/Oilseed_Sunflower.html  
It would be possible to grow Jerusalem Artichokes or Maximillian Sunflowers too. Both are perennial. I think they might not produce much seed with all that nitrogen--perennials usually don't. If you wanted the tubers or the stems and leaves, they would be good for that. The seeds are very small. https://www.quailseeds.com/store/p470/Maximillian_Sunflower.html

If I plant some raspberries to grow and intertwine on one side of my coop, will I regret it? How likely would it be that I need to repair that side of the coop and have to fight thorny canes?

Exactly why I asked, thanks! If I plant raspberries on the *inside* of the perimeter would it be any better?

The biggest difficulty I can imagine with having raspberry canes in close proximity to the chicken coop/run would be in livestock care. If I needed to catch a chicken for some reason or another, thorny brambles would be an unpleasant problem to deal with in that situation. Even if thornless raspberries are planted inside the run, a paddock rotation system might be needed to prevent the chickens from eating the young greens before the plants get going in spring. I don't know that I'd recommend planting brambles, thornless or not. I'd look at other ways to give chickens the benefits of raspberries (shade, shelter, fodder etc).

No one has mentioned the first problem I see: chickens laying their eggs deep in the patch where it's hard for you to collect them. 50 chickens is an awful lot for two people, you must be thinking of meat or dual use chickens. With that many chickens, unless your run  is huge it will soon be bare Earth--only trees and shrubs will have much chance.
We had free range chickens for years, but the predator problem got so bad two years ago that we fenced in a run. It includes their coop and my orchard, so there were already trees giving them aerial cover from hawks over most of the run--I aim to fill in the gaps this spring. If I could find them  cheap or my attempt at rooting cuttings last year had worked, I'd be using goumi bushes which are very tough, fix nitrogen, need nearly no care, and make a heavy crop of berries after two years. The berries are sour enough to pretty much need sugar, and have little soft pits so I boil them and screen out the solids and make syrup from the fruit. One issue with starting seedy forbs is that chickens love to scratch everywhere, so you may need to put protective fences around each until they're strong enough to stand up to chickens--not practical with small annuals.
Oh, incidentally, some wineberries (a type of raspberry from the Phillipines, invasive here) have established themselves in my run, and I make no effort to beat them back as I get most of the fruit--the chickens just take the lowest berries.

Raspberries are indeed like the Borg, they will not stay in place.
The once neat hedges here have shifted beyond reasonable control.
There is or are raspberry threads which might be useful.
Bless you and the chickens M-H

Snakes of the sort you have in North Georgia also like to curl up in raspberry brambles and are very hard to see in that sort of cover.  

Snakes love eggs.

Vanessa Smoak wrote:I’m planning to get chickens and will be establishing a garden for them for several reasons. On a neighboring property there is a huge thicket of raspberry brambles. I have thought considerably how that would make a fantastic chicken habitat.

If I plant some raspberries to grow and intertwine on one side of my coop, will I regret it? How likely would it be that I need to repair that side of the coop and have to fight thorny canes?

I’m in bear country and the further I plant berries the better my flock propagates.
I don’t have chickens, but ducks and geese. Though they fend for themselves on the small predators, the larger ones cause problems.
My main concern, this year, has been a recurrent visit from a coyote. I watched the dang thing climbing the fence and ran for my shotgun. It didn’t in because I have a top cover.
I carry my shotgun with me everywhere these days.

I used to allow my chickens to roam my backyard.
I restricted them to a smaller run because my family was tired of bird poop on the boardwalk.
Before that they were in and around my blackberry bushes, but their scratching really only affected annuals.

These days my birds spend most of the day on the compost pile.

If I were to start rasing chockens from scratch, I would build a hoop house and skin it with chicken wire.
Inside the hoophouse, I would pile on the leaves and woodchips.
Plant whatever you want, in big pots.

I had three 50’ rows of raspberries in my last chicken yard (expanded the chicken yard into the raspberry area) before I moved and loved how it worked. The chickens kept any greenery including grasses and weeds to a minimum between the canes and ate fruit and leaves up to about 24”-30” high. I used standard care of raspberries such as pruning and keeping them to a single line. I saw nothing but good come from my experience. I am doing the same at my current house.