What edible plants can i plant out for the chickens?

[seeds]

Hi

I would like to keep chickens on as little money as possible and i was wondering if anyone has and ideas of any plants i could sow to lower their feeding costs.
Any tips would be grately apreciated

[Flummery]

Just about any greens we would eat - the cabbage family etc. I'm growing loads of chard as it's the only thing I so far haven't had to net against pigeons.

[msflocks]

mine arent interested in scraps yet, they are 11 weeks old today, when do they start appreciating this?

[Snadger]

My chooks favourites are swede tops but I aint ruining my swede crop to please them!

Tall fooder kale is the way to go...the type grown by farmers to feed the beast!
Think it might be thousand headed? I grew it one year and it gives an excellent leaf to plant area ratio....didn't have chooks at the time and got sick of eating it though.
Walking stick kale is good as well as being anovelty growing up to 8 foot in the first year , it is very productive!
Most kales are good, but don't go for the dwarf varieties and leave tuscan kale alone as it is a comparatively slow grower.....the rest will romp away , even if sown now (Now where did I put that kale seed?)

[di]

Ours love curly Kale & it's a pretty easy crop to grow...the pigeons round here don't seem interested in it,so don't even need to bother netting it.
They got the leaves off a calabrese plant ready for harvest today.
Also,when you "think" you've run out of greens,don't forget the weeds!I collect them all in a bucket as I weed & then throw them in with the girls.They have a good scratch about & eventually eat most of them.The current favourites seem to be anything resembling a dandelion...particularly the tall spiky type ones.

[Snadger]

Ours love curly Kale & it's a pretty easy crop to grow...the pigeons round here don't seem interested in it,so don't even need to bother netting it.
They got the leaves off a calabrese plant ready for harvest today.
Also,when you "think" you've run out of greens,don't forget the weeds!I collect them all in a bucket as I weed & then throw them in with the girls.They have a good scratch about & eventually eat most of them.The current favourites seem to be anything resembling a dandelion...particularly the tall spiky type ones.

Yep.......my chooks second favourite greens are dandelions, and they are good for them.......a natural wormer methinks!

I'm still not growing them purposely for them though!

[bluemoon]

As the others have said kale is a good idea it will keep them in greens all winter. You could also grow sweetcorn (not too late to sow some if you do it now) most sweetcorn varieties produce two cobs a big one and a little one, eat the big ones yourselves and throw the small ones to the chooks. They can be sun dried (assuming we get any) and stored for the winter too. You could also give them any over-ripe fruit and even freeze some of it for the winter months. If you're growing Brussels sprouts they will enjoy the tops. I've been giving mine sprouted seeds because for various reasons all my crops are late this year, but that's another good idea for winter. I'm growing Quinoa, which is related to the British weed 'Fat Hen', and I'll be giving them that over the winter too. They also love root crops like potatoes, swede and carrots, but seem to prefer them cooked so I've started putting a few extra in the steamer.
As for age, well I got my Rhodies at 9 weeks and my Gold-Tops at seven weeks and started giving them a mixed diet straight away.

[Maddie106]

Basically just about ANYTHING green me thinks!
Mine love dandelion leaves (and that is my excuse for a rather wild front garden!)
I don't ever use chemicals on the lawn, so give them all the grassclippings to scratch round in too.

Just a word of warning tho.....you will need to give them a constant supply of layers pellets too, so they get their protein and calcium to give strong egg shells and stay healthy.

[Crundy]

Hi
I would like to keep chickens on as little money as possible and i was wondering if anyone has and ideas of any plants i could sow to lower their feeding costs.
Any tips would be grately apreciated

lol, in all honesty I really don't think you'll be able to grow anything fast enough. Chickens are basically tubes. Food goes in one end and eggs and a lot of poop comes out the other. They have a minute brain whose sole function is to find more food for one of the tube.

As someone else has said though, you'll still have to give them only layers pellets in the morning. Give them whatever you like in the evening. Layers pellets are pretty cheap really, especially if you find a good supplier.

[seeds]

Thanks for the ideas, luckily i already have to many kale plants which needs planting out soon!

[Snadger]

Hi

I would like to keep chickens on as little money as possible and i was wondering if anyone has and ideas of any plants i could sow to lower their feeding costs.
Any tips would be grately apreciated

They really need a grain based diet, so unless you live on a farm where they can scratch around picking up spilt wasted wheat etc the greenstuff is just to give the egg yolk a bit of colour.
Fed on pellets (processed corn) they really are very cheap to keep though!

[Hilary B]

You could probably grow enough protein (but it would take a fair chunk of land) but for winter feed it would need to be 'dry stuff', which would mean dried peas/field beans, and those would have to be coarsely ground to make chook food (and you would need grain as well).
What you would have to buy in would be the source of calcium, oyster shell and/or limestone flour.

[Flummery]

I grow greens for mine. It would cost a lot to buy green food for them (although there's a saving on what I don't spend on eggs!) But it's only a supplement. They get layers' pellets as their main food. I don't think I've got enough land to grow their entire dietary requirements. I'd lose the will to live!

[CoraxAurata]

mine arent interested in scraps yet, they are 11 weeks old today, when do they start appreciating this?

It varies, usually they need to learn that its good to eat, either by example of others, having it in small amount on and off from baby hood or by smuggling tiny bits into their mash and increasing the size of the bits over time to get them to start trying it... , also tossing various sized peies at their feel so they go for the movement may get them started on a new feed stuff - my girls tried blackberries for the first time a couple of days ago ...very entertaining!

[bluemoon]

Try the babies with chopped up grapes, they love them, then once they've realized that food doesn't just come in dry greyey-green pellets they will happily try other things.