azaleas and chickens

[aharriso]

So it looks like Azaleas are on the poisonous shrub list and I've always heard chickens are pretty smart about what they can eat and what they can't. However, I have a couple azalea shrubs in the garden and they seem to really like going over and plucking the flowers off. I have watched to see if they sample and drop but they actually eat them. Should I pull these shrubs out?

 

[tn_artist]

My whole yard is azaleas, forsythia and gardenia. They never bother the gardenia. They like the shade and hiding spaces of the forsythia and they eat leaves of the azaleas and the one boxwood. Oh, and they eat my tomatoes, but so do the squirrels and bunnies.

 

[Compost King]

My chickens will eat them for a bit when they run out of greens to forage. Then they stop. I guess it gets them sick after they try it and they stop. Mine sample all sorts of plants that are poisonous plants than stop. As long as they have plenty of feed and are not desperate they won't eat enough to harm them.

 

[Mvan42]

No problems here with my chickens and azalea bushes, I even have two beside the coop.

 

[Brahma Chicken5000]

My chickens seem to like newly emerging azalea leaves and they will pull out buds set for next year. I have about a dozen azaleas in my yard and my chickens are fine. Broody hens seem to like to teach their chicks to pull out the flower buds in my experience.

 

[AllenK RGV]

So far my silkies(not the smartest breed) eat every flower on the property and in their run that they can find save one. It is on a flowering cactus and flowers about the size of a dinner plate. I don't know if it is toxic just they leave those alone. I suspect Azalea flowers are non toxic as plants usually like to be pollenated and killing pollenators would prove an evolutionary dead end.

 

[aharriso]

Ok, I can rest a bit easier. They have tons of other things to forage. I almost think the Azaleas are for sport. They like to lay under them and then they pick at the flowers. But eventually they move on in the yard. Thank you all for replying!

 

[CatWhisperer]

I would put some wire fencing around them just to be safe.