Common garden veggies high in protien

[Momma Hen]

With Spring around the corner, I'm getting my gardening plans in order. This year I'd like to include some high in protien veggies for my girls. Any suggestions?

 

[V Chic Chick]

Beans and lentils, although I have no idea how to grow lentils TBH.

 

[SandraChick]

Anything dark in color will be good for your chickens...not necessarily high in protein, but good vitamins etc. Kale is a great one that chickens will devour!

I personally add leftover meat from our dinners to their treats to add protein to their diet....(and the leftover raw meat from cleaning fish, deer, ducks, etc after hunting).

Sandra

 

[BalancedCAmom]

My girls love spinach and bok choy, I plant a couple for them but even after they are through with theirs they hop my garden fence for more. I have been rewarded with many double yolks!

 

[MTchick]

Broccoli is very high in calcium, which I'm sure your chickens would very much appreciate (although I'm not sure about broccoli and protein). The legumes (peas, beans, lentils) are all very high in protein like the previous post mentioned. And they are really easy to grow IF you get them in the soil when it is still cool (here in Montana, that means St. Pat's Day).

I raise at least two seed packets worth of snow peas every year and they are fantastic growers. You'll have to find the right variety for your climate, of course.

MTchick

 

[bigzio]

The thing to keep in mind here is, not only what is nutricious but what will my flock like?

We have been doing this for years and have found alot of things that work for us.

It's easy to keep the hens happy while everything is growing, but they free range and can eat whatever they like all day long, so we decided to focus on veggies we could grow for the flock that we could utilize long after growing season ended.

One of the easiest to grow is zucchini. Go ahead and use all the tender ones you want for yourself. Toward the end of the season or when some get to large for your liking, let them mature into very large ones, they keep as well as winter squash and when I slice one in half down the middle and feed to the flock during during late fall and winter my flock makes it disappear in minutes, and it's nutricious.

I have one left yet from last year and have fed bushels so far this winter.

Apples when in season, can be harvested and saved and is another my flock loves. We slice and dice them and when the hens see me coming with the big silver pan, it's a joy.

Tomatoes, the birds love, again can be frozen and saved, then thawed and loved by the hens in the dead of winter.

This is afew of the many that work for my happy, healthy flock.

Hope this helps, bigzio

 

[Foghorn]

Bigzio,
Thanks for all the choices that have made your flock happy. I will definately have some saved for mine next winter and will certainly keep these ideas in mind when I plant!
-Eric

 

[ncboman]

I've had good success growing sunflowers right in the chicken yard. The chickens don't seem to bother them while growing and love the seed in late summer/fall. Also the sunflowers provide extra shade during the hot months.

I also have beech trees which produce an incredible amounts of mast each fall/winter. Beech mast results in very hi-quality eggs, imo, and since the beechnuts don't all fall at once, I get the suppliment all winter long here in NC.

 

[Barnyard Dawg]

Our chickens like lettuce, green leafy vegetables, squash leaves, tomatoes, sunflowers they also love our blackberries and raspberries, figs that fall from the trees so I do not need to clean up. They especially love when we steam shrimp we give them the heads and shells for calcium similar to egg or oyster shell.

 

[dlhunicorn]

http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/PS043
"The nutritional value of any protein is directly related to the amino acid composition of that protein. A protein that does not contain the proper amount of required (essential) amino acids would be an imbalanced protein and would have a lower nutritional value to the bird. Proteins of cereal grains and most other plant protein concentrates fail to supply the complete amino acid needs of poultry, due to a shortage of methionine and/or lysine. Soybean meal, which is widely used in poultry diets, is a good source of lysine and tryptophan, but it is low in the sulfur-containing amino acids methionine and cysteine. Fishmeal is an excellent source of all of these amino acids. A well-balanced protein, such as that found in fishmeal, is considered to be of high nutritional value for the bird. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complete_protein
..."Although most vegetable proteins are deficient in one or more essential amino acids, a few have amino acid ratios that make them complete or nearly so. These foods include spirulina, quinoa[2], soy, buckwheat, and amaranth. "

Be careful with protein...too much or the wrong kind (upsetting the balance needed between all the necessary nutrients) can cause problems.