Anyone else ever planted vegetables for your hens?!

[Tevian]

I saw this idea from a Better Homes and Gardens episode a while back: to plant veggies in your chook run for them to pick at, but didn’t have any plants to use that I thought would survive.
Well, today I was pulling out some old spinach plants and thought; ‘why not?!’ They’re old, tough, and honestly nothing kills spinach. If they die, oh well, better than throwing them out. If they live, free greens for the birds!
At first they were 50/50 on what weird thing the human was doing today, but after a minute they were all over it.
I’ll keep watering them and hope they root in the rock hard soil up there lol.



Happy chickens!

 

[Jasfarm]

Love this! Yes, I do! They have torn them all up though

Now I grow them then toss them in. Or I plant chick mix seed in the fall so in the spring they have lots of fun foraging around.

 

[srcannello]

I grow them in a hydroponic garden. It only takes two weeks to have micro greens. I am also trying to plant and grow a few cabbages to full size indoors. We will see if garden indoors is successful

 

[Alagirl]

I saw this idea from a Better Homes and Gardens episode a while back: to plant veggies in your chook run for them to pick at, but didn’t have any plants to use that I thought would survive.
Well, today I was pulling out some old spinach plants and thought; ‘why not?!’ They’re old, tough, and honestly nothing kills spinach. If they die, oh well, better than throwing them out. If they live, free greens for the birds!
At first they were 50/50 on what weird thing the human was doing today, but after a minute they were all over it.
I’ll keep watering them and hope they root in the rock hard soil up there lol.


View attachment 3319057
View attachment 3319056Happy chickens!

seeing that it took about 2 weeks for the run to be decimated by my 5 chickens....
It is definitely enrichment for them.

 

[chickengr]

I plant but outside their run. I have to pick it up but at least they have veggies longer. nothing can last long in their run unless protected from above with some mash.

 

[Tonyroo]

Your spinach looks like Swiss chard.

 

[WingsysRoost]

I've planted outside the run for them before, mostly sprouting seeds that I just let grow past the "sprout" stage. I've also given them sprouted seeds at the sprout stage, though they weren't fond of the particular mix that I gave them for some reason. They also get to go in the garden in the fall so they can tear things up, so technically by that logic all those plants were planted for them too? lol

Their run is completely covered with a solid roof and also very dry because of that, so just a little bit difficult to grow anything in. My plan is to eventually add a run expansion (with hardware cloth on top to stop any predators while still letting the rain in), which I can then attempt to plant if they don't manage to destroy the plants first.

 

[rosemarythyme]

I wouldn't specifically grow vegetables for the chickens but they get spent plants, overgrowth, damaged fruits and vegetables, and tops/leaves etc. that we humans normally wouldn't eat, like carrot tops, cauliflower leaves (which are tasty), broccoli leaves (not so tasty).

 

[Tevian]

Love this! Yes, I do! They have torn them all up though

I am fully expecting these to be torn up by the time I got back up there this evening lol. At least they will have had fun.

Your spinach looks like Swiss chard.

I think it’s technically Silverbeet yeah lol. Both plants are about 6 years old so they really needed to go. I think I have like 4 different varieties of various spinaches and silverbeet.

I wouldn't specifically grow vegetables for the chickens but they get spent plants, overgrowth, damaged fruits and vegetables, and tops/leaves etc. that we humans normally wouldn't eat, like carrot tops, cauliflower leaves (which are tasty), broccoli leaves (not so tasty).

I love doing this too. They always get the weeds from my garden and food scraps. I love dumping a big pile of stuff in there for them to go hog wild on