Chicken Feed

pipes · Post by **pipes** » Wed Nov 23, 2016 9:25 pm

Hey.
Does anyone grow their own chicken feed. Such as sunflower seed or other "treat" scratch feed? Just wondering what I can add to the garden in spring to offset some of the feed bill, or give the girls a tasty treat...

Let me know what you do...

Post by **WLLady** » Wed Nov 23, 2016 9:42 pm

Mine love (in the summer) cucumbers. Summer squash. Any kind of squash really!! Lettuce...beans. starwberries (grrr). And garter snakes and mice (thise arent fed on purpose but my girls will actively hunt them.) Sunflower heads in the fall-i just put the entire head into the coop and they go nuts.
I also will give them leftover cooked rice, pasta....

windwalkingwolf · Post by **windwalkingwolf** » Thu Nov 24, 2016 12:44 am

Well, I didn't plant it, it just popped up everywhere, but the chickens really loved pigweed this year--both leaves and seed heads. No idea if it's good for them, but it was free food and didn't do them any harm. Actually, any time I weed the garden I take all the stuff I pull out to the birds. No good for storage/winter feed though, unless you can ferment the way JimW did last year with grass clippings...basically stuff semi-dry greenery into strong plastic bags as full and mashed down as you can get, suck all the air out and seal tightly.

goatgal35 · Post by **goatgal35** » Thu Nov 24, 2016 6:30 am

All the weeds and food scraps from the garden go to birds and pigs. We grow amaranth and sunflowers to hang in the pens. Pumpkins, cabbage, and mangle beets for winter. I also buy a couple bins of grounder apples and feed them through winter. They freeze but the critters don't mind.

baronrenfrew · Post by **baronrenfrew** » Thu Nov 24, 2016 7:15 am

The easiest thing to grow is corn: easy to harvest by hand; kept in a crib (basically a cage with a roof) and throw whole ears to the birds and they'll pull out the kernels.

I've just started looking for Red Fife wheat (a 5 foot tall heritage variety) and want a 55 lb bag to plant without buying it and shipping it from B.C.

Post by **Killerbunny** » Thu Nov 24, 2016 9:39 am

Yes you can eat the pigweed to, it's a type of amaranth.

pipes · Post by **pipes** » Thu Nov 24, 2016 9:31 pm

Sunflowers are easy to grow. Any other seed type plants? Millet, Thistle?

I also read to grow blueberries around your runs. Blueberries like acidic soils from composting shavings and droppings. I like blueberries too...

Happy · Post by **Happy** » Thu Nov 24, 2016 9:34 pm

And when they eat them it looks like a smurf blew up in the run the next day lol! First time I gave my girls a red cabbage I had quite the surprise next time I went out lol