PLEASE HELP US BUILD A NEW HOME FOR OUR CHICKENS

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Our goal is to raise enough funds to build our chickens a brand new and safe chicken run for them to live happily without the threat of foxes. To do this we need your help to raise $16,000.

GREEN CONNECT ENQUIRIES
Phone: (02) 4243 1537
Email: enquiries@green-connect.com.au
Web: www.green-connect.com.au

Green Connect is part of the charity organisation Community Resources, a non-for-profit social enterprise. We employ young people and former refugees in jobs that help the planet and the community.

A SAFE HOME FOR OUR CHICKENS

The Story

We keep free-range chickens on our 11 acre permaculture farm in Warrawong. The chickens provide the community with healthy free-range eggs which we sell alongside our vegie boxes. We also feed the chickens our left over farm scraps, which they eat and help fertilise the soil.

Our current chicken coop and run was built almost a decade ago and have been patched up many times and in all sorts of ways. We have done this to keep our girls safe from foxes. Sadly, on at least two occasions foxes have managed to get in and kill and maim dozens of chickens (once by climbing over, and once by peeling corrugated iron off the side and popping the bolts – which shows how astonishingly clever and strong foxes are, especially when there’s the possibility of chicken for dinner).

The Solution

The team at the Green Connect Farm know that we can’t keep patching the old run up if we’re going to keep our hens safe from foxes in the long term. We need a new, purpose-built run. The entire outer perimeter of the run will be fox-proof, with wire buried deep underground so the foxes can’t dig under, and wire entirely closing the run in so they can’t climb over. This way, the girls can go home to roost at dusk and pop back out again at dawn, following the sun and their instincts rather than waiting for one of their humans to let them in and out.

The plan

More than just safe fencing around the perimeter, the new run will actually be seven new runs. The large area our girls currently forage in will be split into seven areas so that we can grow delicious crops for them as we rotate them around the spaces. Otherwise, as anyone who has ever owned chickens knows, they reduce the area to dust and never get to taste the crops because they dig up the seeds or sprouts.

We need your help

Fencing does not come cheap and we have been putting this project off because we don’t have the funds to do it. So here is our big ask… can you chip in to give our girls a safe new home with different spaces to roam and a house they can let themselves in and out of? All donations over $2 are tax-deductible and come with a bucketload of gratitude from the chooks and us, their humans.

Bog digging and girl with a green watering can gardening in a raised vegetable garden bed

Family playing frisbee together with a dog on a beautiful green lawn in their backyard

Green Connect Gardening and Landscaping workers maintaining a garden in Gerringong on a hill overlooking the ocean

Green Connect Gardening and Landscaping workers standing near the Green Connect ute with rows of new plants in pots

Green Connect Gardening and Landscaping Garden makeover