What are your favorite plants to grow for poultry?

[907poultry]

Russian Bocking 14 Comfrey, peas, kale, lettuce, mulberries, marigolds, oats, barley… What plants do you grow for you flocks? (Ducks, Chickens, Turkeys, Geese, Guinea, Quail, Pheasant, etc.)
Are they efficient, which crops do you not like? What are your growing setups? Where do you source your seeds/root cuttings (website, seller, feed store, seed rack)?

Anyone have experience with compost heated greenhouses? I will be experimenting this winter.

I am in zone 4, saw a fairly recent thread that was similar but not quite what I was looking for. I feel like our summers are warm but I keep seeing posts from people who get 100 something degrees 365. Come summer I will be seeing nearly 24 hours of sunlight.

Poultry enthusiasts from other zones please share for others elsewhere, it would be helpful to list your zone in your post example (zone 6), (zone 8)

Thanks in advance, and hopefully this thread will be useful to people in several growing zones.

 

[JedJackson]

I never grow anything specifically for the chickens, but they get a lot of scraps of cucumbers, squash, and melons. I also give them greens like chickweed, lovage, carrot tops, extra lettuce and cabbage. Really anything I know to be good for them that I don't need goes into their run.

 

[Rangergord]

Zone 2, I grow a wide variety of fruits and vegetables , grass, clover, wheat, oats and sunflowers. I buy seed from seed houses, feed stores and save some of my own seeds. I have used hot beds in my greenhouse. I put straw mixed with poultry manure or urine packed 18 inches deep in a raised bed and plant seeds in a layer of soil on top of the straw. It heats up and germinates the seeds and grows early crops of spinach, lettuce and other cool season crops. It does not heat the greenhouse per se but heats the the crops. I have had plants survive -20C overnight.

 

[Aunt Angus]

Zone 9a
Sunflowers
Peas (though this has been difficult because of unusual temp variations)
Pasture mix of ryegrass, clover, alfalfa for foraging (this stuff is GREAT)
Blueberry
Strawberry and blackberry (grow wild here)

I get my seeds from a local organic supplier. I prep the beds for the plants with compost from my bin. I prep the pasture with a topsoil I buy from the same shop.

I'm lucky. Things just kinda grow here. I replant the sunflowers every year. I reseed the pasture frequently.

 

[JedJackson]

Blackberries grow wild here, too, but I save those for people!

I don't give the chickens much spinach or chard because of the oxalic acid. I'm not sure it hurts them, but why take chances?

Sunflowers and peas are both great ideas!