I have an area fenced off for my wanna-have-a-garden area, but in the rest of my yard where the chickens free range all day, are there some vegetables or berries I can plant that the chickens won't eat?
Thought I'd ask the expert chicken people.
What plants will chickens NOT eat?
Our chickens will eat just about everything, or at least peck at it to try it.
We found out ours don't like peppers, but that doen't mean they won't peck at them.
Ours are not real fond of onions, but they had to snip some of the tops off just to see if they liked them.
And they have gone as far as picking buds off one of my flowers. They didn't eat them, just had to pick them off to see.
I'll have to ask my BF is he knows of anything ours won't eat.
That's the weird thing, my chickens rarely bother the flowers, plants or garden other than to dig in it occasionally for bugs, even at that they rarely dig in the flower beds or garden area. They eat grass.. but never do we lose anything they shouldn't be eating on.
My chickens ate and thrived on everything in the garden--totally killed the bermuda too. They did leave the pokeweed alone eventually. And the haven't bothered the lavender. But I think they will try everything.
If a chicken won't eat it, they will dig it up.
greykyttyn, I want your chickens ;-)
NO!.. my last chickens.. RIR's dug up everything.. ate like lil pigs the scraps we threw out.. but not any plants.. they just dug big holes everywhere. but i feed my chickens table scraps, treats & stuff enough each day I doubt they even look at a plant & think.. o.. i need to eat.. bc thier stomachs are already stuffed. The guy across teh street got half the order of Buff orpingtons from what i took.. mine are twice as big as his & they are only on the other side of the street. :) i feed my well.
The only thing our chickens won't eat is dogbane and prickly pear cactus. Before we fenced in the next pasture and let them into it they had eaten everything else in the chicken yard down to the ground and only left forests of the two disdained types. Now some weeds are beginning to creep back into their yard which, I might add, is about 250x400' so it's not tiny. We also give them table scraps along with their usual allotment of chicken feed. The few times they've gotten into my garden, though, most of the damage was in scratching up plants and messing up my neat rows and my mulch. I'm sure if they were in there longer they'd do a lot more damage.
They won't eat my green beans....dig around them mercilessly, but...
Mine don''t bothercorn, beans, squash and potato, however they will poke around the potato straw for bugs, I made the row extra wide and they built little nests in the potatoes but generally don't bother them. They are not ranging all day. just 5-8 in the evenings.
-joe
Grey, ours seem to be none stop eaters...........piglets we call them.
And ours love beans and the bean plant
They even ate the blossoms of the wild rose bush............LOL
And ours will pick there own current berries if they get the chance. Or I go pick them for them.
Smart idea Joe. We stated letting ours free range only in the evening too and found they have less time to get in to all the things they didn when they free ranged most of the day.
I asked my BF to name some things ours won't eat. His responce was .......
Hmmmmmmmmm
cat nip plants
box-elder trees
chives
Lets just say he couldn't come up with much ours don't eat.
My girls and I go out every morning to see if there are any ripe rasberries, or black rasberries. I eat the ones from the top and they find the ones on the bottom. Have I mentioned how much I love my chickens??
I did hear that four o clocks are not good for chickens, and we have some really nice four o clocks this year, but so far they haven't taken notice.
I was watching this evening to see if I was missing something.. & I can't catch them eatting anything but grass, bugs & dirt.. the occasional (too often sometimes) treat & cat food. They are lil pigs! My cats have taken to standing over the bowl of food & eating btwn each others legs to protect it till they are full. Then its a full fledged fight to get every last drop of cat food. I wish they'd eat lettuce.. I wish they'd eat watermellon, I wish they'd eat table scraps.. but they refuse. Bread.. white bread is all they will eat.. & meal worms. Thats it. I want to give them watermelon & mushmelon & cabbage & lettuce & strawberries, blackberries & such.. but no.. they just look at me like i'm stupid & walk off. My RIR"s might have dug holes but at least they ate everything I gave them as treats. i guess i shouldn't complain.. this way I don't' go broke buying them treats.
I do have to add that Nutmeg pulled the flowers off the impatiens in the front yard this evening ( did not eat them) offered them to the babies.. who just looked at her & walked on.. after that she left them alone. I guess that's the equivalent of getting a child to eat veggies. Now they do like treats.. they had chocolate chip cookies, no bake cookies & lettuce, roast beef & turkey this week. :) very small amounts.. mostly just to see if they would eat it which they did.
here's a great chicken treat chart that I keep around mostly to hand a babysitter when we go away
http://www.backyardchickens.com/web/viewblog.php?id=2593-Treats_Chart
.. now my girls don't even want to try some of it, but it is a wonderfully assembled guideline.
-joe-
I was watering my flower garden and my ducks were enjoying the spray when i saw one of the hens pull off one of my balloon flower blooms :~O
Didn't eat it just pulled off 2 blooms and started eating more bugs under the grass.
Hmmmmm I may have to watch them to see if they are reaching threw my garden fence sampling my flowers.
DH had our chickens and geese in our small orchard next to the main veggie garden, and I was giving someone a tour when I noticed a gander nipping at the young pears and subsequently carrying one away with him. Then I saw one of our White Rock hens up in the peach tree pecking at a ripening fruit. We chased them out of there in a hurry and closed the gate!
Thanks for the site joe.
Our chickens eat almost everything that was listed. There not real fond of carrots. Those are one of the last things they eat, but they will eat them.
Neighbors have a Huge garden at their church, and when the cucumbers get to big, they bring us a big sack of them. We cut them in about 2 inch slices and throw them in to them. They are crazy about the insides of the cucumber. They go right for the seeds.
Where I work, nothing homemade can be kept past 3 days, so it ends up coming home with me (instead of going into the garbage), and into the freezer until I go up to my BF's.
They get very spoiled with a lot of the things on that list. They just love rice and pasta for some reason. But they like most veggies too. And popcorn is a real treat for them.
Greykyttyn, seems the chicks knew better then mom did.....LOL But I liked the discription, like getting kids to eat their veggies....LOL ;-)