folliage for chicken yard

pslane

Songster
12 Years
Apr 22, 2010
76
40
114
Sumter SC
I'm trying to remember what kind of grasses and bushes I use to plant in my chicken yard. I just got started with chickens again after a few yrs out of it. There were some grasses and bushes that I used to plant that chickens would not eat. I'm pretty sure Mondo grass was one of them but can anybody tell me some more plants that are a "turn off" to chickens?

Thanks,
psl
 
I poked around a little and found these, posted by various people. I've updated it to include posts from this page:

Aloe
Bleeding hearts
Camellias
Carnations
Clematis
Conifers
Day lillies
Elephant ears
Forsythia (mixed results)
Grass (Fountain grass, spiky varieties)
Golden Rod
Grape vines (if big enough to be out of reach)
Honeysuckle
Horseradish
Heuchera
Hydrangea
Laurel
Lavender
Lilac
Nettles
Oregano
Pampas grass
Pines
Raspberries
Rosemary
Sage
Salvia
Succulent
Tomatoes
Thyme
Wild rose
Wire verbena
Zucchini


Some of these are on the Toxic Plant List, but a few people have pointed out that chickens won't eat things that are toxic for them unless they are starving. Even if they took an experimental nibble, it wouldn't be likely to kill them, and the stomach upset would probably deter them from trying it again. I don't think anyone has a story about a chicken dying from eating a toxic plant.

http://www.poultryhelp.com/toxicplants.html Here is the list of toxic plants. I think I'd interpret it as "things they won't eat"
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I'm not sure that I would include grape vines on that list or at least not the leaves. We have grape vines bordering one side of our yard and our 7 chickens regularly snack on the leaves. But it must not be their favorite food because the vines do still have leaves on them. Maybe they only eat them when they are in the mood for Greek food!
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I know they won't bother with golden rod--I have to keep mowing it down in the chicken yard or it'll take over.
 
I have put a little 2 foot high chicken wire cage around the plants I think are vulnerable and this has worked. The plant grows inside without molestation and continues to grow out of the top where the chickens cannot reach it.

My chickens have left alone any spiky grassy plants, conifers, lilac, but have nibbled my grape vine, rose, apple and dogwood leaves. These plants are big enough to stand a bit of nibbling though. They totally destroyed some euonymus and geraniums I put in. Annoyingly they are not eating the nettles!
 
Forsythia is their FAVORITE treat.
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Ate one bush down to the ground. It had nice oval-shaped leaves and it looked like holly leaves by the time they got done with it.
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They do not like the cat mint for some reason and will only hide under my day lillies. Its like their own little jungle in there.
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They use the day lilly leaves to hide whenever a dangerous finch flies over or someone beeps a car horn.
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