Anyone else do a fall seeding?

[Ohne-Fehler]

We just did a fall seeding of part of our poultry area for some new spring growth. We focused mostly on legumes as the birds love to eat them and it will help improve our soil quality. What are you planting?

 

[1shelby1]

YES!Peaceful Valley has chicken forage mix-I just seeded a 'bed' in the run area,covered with shade cloth until it germinates.It is supposed to increase the egg omega -3's.But the chickens love it and I get that great orange yolk.The roots are really long once established ,so they are hard for the hens to destroy.

 

[Mak]

I use the chicken forage mix, too. And recently seeded part of the run that's closed off from chicken access until we get good growth in spring. Then I'll switch and seed the part they are curently on. Hoping to eventually be able to do a rotating pasture kind of deal.

 

[A.T. Hagan]

I've done this in the past, but when the long range weather folks said we were going into a La Nina this winter I decided not to this year to save having to irrigate it.

Here's a photo of what it looked like back in 2007:

That's a bag of a local deer food plot mix, a bag of feed oats, and a pound of mustard seed. It lasted to not quite the end of the winter with thirty young chickens grazing it.

- The Kinder Minor wanted me to put that in.

 

[adubsroit]

We ordered several different legumes from Territorial Seed and seeded one of our poultry pastures. We used New Zealand White, Crimson Clover, and Mammoth Red Clover. My boyfriend helps manage a farm and has a degree in Rangeland Ecology so he helped pick out plants that would be well adapted to our area and would need little to no irrigation here. They are currently doing a big cover crop planting project on the farm too. We also planted a section of Winter Wheat for our birds. Its actually a major crop here and needs no irrigation and no inputs so it will grow easily. Plus our birds love it

.

We also have started to plant some of our herbs and vegetables for next year. Some lettuce is in, as well as garlic, bunching onions, horse radish, cilantro and dill.

 

[annaraven]

I JUST got my garden dug up for planting winter crops. (We just moved here in June.) I'm going to be putting in some chard, some radishes, garlic, and maybe some peas.

I'll have to figure out how to keep the girls *out* of there until the seeds are established... These are for me! ;-)

 

[adubsroit]

We ordered several different legumes from Territorial Seed and seeded one of our poultry pastures. We used New Zealand White, Crimson Clover, and Mammoth Red Clover. My boyfriend helps manage a farm and has a degree in Rangeland Ecology so he helped pick out plants that would be well adapted to our area and would need little to no irrigation here. They are currently doing a big cover crop planting project on the farm too. We also planted a section of Winter Wheat for our birds. Its actually a major crop here and needs no irrigation and no inputs so it will grow easily. Plus our birds love it

.

We also have started to plant some of our herbs and vegetables for next year. Some lettuce is in, as well as garlic, bunching onions, horse radish, cilantro and dill.

Hagan it does look like its supposed to be a nasty year. We are banking on not having to irrigate this next year, we actually never had to irrigate the poultry area this year. We didn't even water our lawn. Although water should be good next year as La Nina will mean more snow pack for us so we should have excellent water here. Amazingly last year irrigation ran until September here and usually the water master shuts down the ditches by the end of July.

 

[jessylee]

I am planting Fava Beans, Rye grain, and common vetch, Never grown these before. Has anyone out there grown these or fed them to their chickens? Any info is welcomed, thanks!

 

[Mac_]

Grain rye (Abruzzi) - Yes. We feed the young rye to chickens and ducks. After it goes to seed, the ducks will eat the seeds off the stalks.

Our ducks like to eat the volunteer vetch. I have read something about too much of the seeds being toxic, but I think that you would have to be using the seed as part of a feed recipe for it to be a problem, but I'm not sure about that.

Mac

 

[Ibicella]

A.T. Hagan :

I've done this in the past, but when the long range weather folks said we were going into a La Nina this winter I decided not to this year to save having to irrigate it.

Here's a photo of what it looked like back in 2007:

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_SxFfd4HLezA/T... Hagan corn patch, December 16, 2007 - 01.jpg

That's a bag of a local deer food plot mix, a bag of feed oats, and a pound of mustard seed. It lasted to not quite the end of the winter with thirty young chickens grazing it.

- The Kinder Minor wanted me to put that in.

Beautiful!

Do you pasture your chickens elsewhere so it gets time to germinate and grow?​