chickens and tomatoes?

[SillyChick]

Oh yes - they love tomatoes! They like to peck at it because it's red and then eat it up. Maybe you can plant them a little outside of the run, just far enough so that they can't reach it. Chickens will naturally destroy and eat any plant they see - my run was out of grass after about a week upon introducing chickens in the coop.

Good luck!

 

[chickenannie]

My Cambodian neighbors plant squash and gourd vines all over their chicken pens. The plants grow like crazy up the wire, over the tops (making nice shade in summertime) and even inside the pens. I don't know if the people or the chickens eat the squashes, but it looks like a nice little ecosystem.

 

[Gonzo the Great]

Okay, saw another post of someone putting in cayanne pepper in the cracked corn...now tomatoes. That's it...I'm gonna try to make a huevos rancheros-in-a-shell. Now all I need to do is figure out how to keep the shredded cheese from melting...

 

[ThreeGlovers]

1acrefarm

You actually had extra tomatos? I still can't seem to plant enough as is. Nothing beats fresh tomatos, that and the 10 gallons of tomato wine i have fermenting. I didn't even have enough to can any tomato sauce last year. Going to double the size of my garden this year and that was before trying to plant something for the chickens to cut down on the feed bill.

Bo

 

[chickenannie]

I made the mistake of buying ONE of every tomato plant that looked interesting one year. 25 plants will carry a family and relatives a loonnggg way with tomatoes!

 

[bills]

My tomatoes all got blight last summer.

I didn't get more than a handful from 13 plants. errrrrh!

No way any tomatoes I get this year are going to my chickens. They can grow thier own!

 

[scgamecock]

Yes and mine love watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumbers.

 

[1acrefarm]

Quote:
I had plenty of extra. I was giving them away every chance I got. I ate them until I was sick of them too. I did not have alot of plants just seven.They got huge though. I could not keep them tied. Once they got close to six feet despite my best efforts they fell over and started growing across the ground. The quality of some tomatoes suffered due to growing on ground. Last year was the best tomato year ever for me. I am wondering if the smoke from the wildfires gave them some extra carbon dioxide. They did not get anything special for fertilizer. I just dug a ditch next to the row and thats where I emptied and rinsed water buckets for the animals. The dirty duck water probably fertilized them plenty. I am not going to expect as good a year this year. I am going to plant 18 plants. If I have too many I can sale them I guess.

 

[Crazy4Chicks]

I did not know the plant itself was bad for them - mine ate the plant a few times last summer - I have a friend who had a cherry tomatoe overload and she would bring bags full of tomatoes over for the flock and when the plant started to slow down from producing she would pull them up by the trunk full and we would toss them into the run for the chickens and the ducks.

no-one seemed to have a problem with them.

Julie