Chicken-friendly cover crop?

[sfchixn]

For those of you who are raising meat chicks on pasture, what kind of cover crop do you use? This year, we raised meat chicks on a cover crop that was intended to cut for hay and found that they did not eat as much. Perhaps next time, just need to mow down the crop that they are pastured on? The second batch of chicks was raised on a short wild pasture and they ate the area clean each day we moved them!

 

[iwltfum]

Clover and vetch! We keep clover seed with our pasture pens and toss a handful in any bare spots that the chickens leave behind. The clover likes the bare patches and germinates well after a good rain. We never till any areas that we run the chickens on, we just encourage the clover and the vetch as much as possible. The clover is a productive hay crop, vetch is not. Clover is about 13-16% protein. And vetch is about 25% protein.

 

[sfchixn]

We wound up ordering this cover crop from Deer Creek:
https://www.deercreekseed.com/free-range-sheep-hog-pasture-mix

 

[Timmy59]

Post #2 NAILED it with the clover and vetch, we have a stong clover mix we run on..