California - Northern

[lizanne]

The only things in the garden that my chickens will leave alone has been green onions. They seem to love the garlic though.... weird chickens. I have eggs pipping in the incubator!!

Day 21 is tomorrow, but we might have a couple babies tonight!!

 

[chiqita]

this is a pretty nice little book, and has a good list of "chicken resistant plants" (p. 141) -- but a lot of the trick is the have the ratio of plants to chickens right, so even if they nip a few leaves, they move on to nibble something else, rather than staying and chowing down.
http://www.timberpress.com/books/free_range_chicken_gardens/bloom/9781604692372

other plants my flock ignores: scented-leaf geraniums, calla lilies, foxglove, thyme, oregano, borage, love-in-the-mist...

edit: all the plants in my garden are also ones that deer don't like to eat, since they are a far bigger plant-predator around here than the chickens are!

The first year I moved here a deer jumped the back fence and took the top of ever plant in the garden. Bite ohh thats no good bite... ohh more peppers....bite.... she didnt like it enough to finish anything and I had 4 rows of short plants grrr.

 

[ronott1]

I thought there was a cave fungas in mexico? Ill hace to mario some probing questions about his beloved cave fungas.
You could have just gotten me out of a trip to mexico! Woo!

Strange but True: The Largest Organism on Earth Is a Fungus

The blue whale is big, but nowhere near as huge as a sprawling fungus in eastern Oregon

USDA FOREST SERVICE, PACIFIC NORTHWEST RESEARCH STATION
Next time you purchase white button mushrooms at the grocery store, just remember, they may be cute and bite-size but they have a relative out west that occupies some 2,384 acres (965 hectares) of soil in Oregon's Blue Mountains. Put another way, this humongous fungus would encompass 1,665 football fields, or nearly four square miles (10 square kilometers) of turf.

 

[Hangtown Farms]

I have never had problems with pine shavings in the 50 years I have been doing this. People say all kinds of things online. I have not used cedar shavings much, so I don't know about that. I know that if cedar shavings get wet they can stain a bird, but until recently I had never heard anything about cedar being a bad thing. When you read this kind of stuff online these days it would seem everything is bad for chickens.....kind of a miracle any of them survived.

Walt

the thing with cedar is there are numerous plants called cedar lol
eastern red cedar is a juniper
western red cedar is a Thuja
Incense cedar is Calocedrus
technically any conifer that repels insects has oils that can cause respiratory issues. I still like to use cedar fence boards

small sprouts will almost certainly be torn up by the feet scratching, but once plants are larger, there are actually quite a lot that chickens don't eat at all, or will only briefly nip but then leave alone. Ones that i have no trouble growing (except again, protecting them if they are very small so they can't be uprooted) include:

-- lavender
-- rosemary
-- sage -- the regular cooking kind they won't touch at all, i also have some other salvias and they sometimes nip at those, but if the plant's large enough it'll be fine
-- lambs ears -- they actually do like to eat the leaves, but if the plant's big enough, it can spare them.
-- CA poppies
-- fever few
-- mexican daisies
-- catmint and other mint plants
-- blue flax -- again, they nibble on these, but do not demolish the plant
-- daffodils and narcissus (lots up right now, chickens haven't touched them)

granted, if the plants were enclosed into the coop with the chickens full-time, i'm sure they be wiped out -- if not eaten, trampled -- but my chickens roam through my garden whenever they're out and about, and it's survived just fine:

that's a massive sage plant behind them, and a lemon tree -- and this picture makes the garden look like it's all gravel, but it isn't, here is is without chickens:

nice

 

[Happy Chooks]

I was curious, so I went out and measured them and the biggest ones are 6 inches across. They are growing only in one place, and only about 6 of them. It appears that they like the area that I put the droppings I rake out of the chicken yard. I wouldn't want to disturb/pick them since I am throughly enjoying looking at them whenever I go out to the chicken yard. I have never seen them growing here before. I do like hearing about them and knowing what they are

Here are some other interesting mushrooms I took pictures of today. They make such interesting subjects for photography.

I've seen this kind on my property. Mostly around my garden and my compost pile.



For those looking for plants that chickens won't eat - don't believe anyone that tells you they don't eat roses. I had to fence off my roses from my chickens.

 

[Robert Jordan]

Chickee...the mushrooms in your first pic in your last post are rain soaked Blewitts. The white ones that are in a clump are called Cowboys Handkerchief...they are ridiculously slimy on the cap.

 

[SilkiesForEver]

Quote: I learned the hard way putting chickens and roses together. The poor plant was ravaged by the time they were through with it.

 

[casportpony]

Quack!


-Kathy

 

[ronott1]

Quack!


-Kathy

That is a great photo!

 

[SilkiesForEver]

Quote: Agreed! Adorable! Makes me want to get ducks again..