chicken treats

[hawthorns]

would chickens eat freshly mown grass clippings

[lynda66]

dunno, but my cat likes those chicken shaped treats

[MaureenHall]

Yes they will, but please - not too much! Think I read somewhere that it can give them sour-crop, I'm sure someone will put me right on this if I've dreamt it

[Snadger]

I'm on reading a Victorian chook book where it advocates feeding young chickens with a chick crumb with added grass clippings so I shouldn't see why not!

[di]

When one of ours was poorly recently the chap that gave her the once over checked we weren't giving them grass clippings~I think as they're not attatched to clump of dirt they can't peck at them & end up swallowing too long a bits & then they can't digest them??He suggested regularly putting bits of turf in the run for them to peck at.
Sorry,I admit to not being sure but that was the advice we were given.

[Hilary B]

FRESH trimmings, if so short as to be smaller than layers' pellets, may be OK, but they start to ferment pretty soon, and that might well make them dangerous (it certainly does for horses). How the grass was clipped may also be relevant. If it was mashed up by a hover-mower, the fermenting system might start more readily than with grass cut in the more traditional ways used in victorian times.....

[Sue]

Hi
I've cut them grass with no bother, I give it to them for activity. Cut a big pile of grass, not long grass, and mix in a large trug with slugs and other nasties from a days gardening, some strawberries or blackberries and a little grain, put in run and stand back. It keeps them occupied for ages, they do eat some of the grass but they are mostly keener on raking through it for the goodies.
With my hens being on an allotment, it worries me more that they have visitors (human ones) when I'm not there and long grass gets poked through the wire for them.
As I can't let them wander about out of the hen run anymore due to the influence of my refugee hen, Betty Taylor who is a determined escapee, I've rigged up some weldmesh attached to bamboo canes so I can create a space for them outside the run and they have great fun raking about in there for their own grass when I'm working on the hen plot.
Sue