Climbing Vines... Chicken Run Sides... Safe for chickens...

[Buugette]

Hi all...

My hubby is finishing up the new run for my girls. It is approximately 7 1/2' by 20'. My hubby was thinking of planting something outside the run on 2 sides and the back... some type of vine that would creep up the sides and maybe over the top. The run is completely enclosed with hardware wire.

I have 2 chicken gardens inside the run so they do have their own supply of greens.

I just want to know what type of vine I could plant that would grow well in SE Pennsylvania, and not be poison for my girls.

Thanks for any help.

Diana

 

[colebarnhart]

Grapes work great!!!

 

[Buugette]

I thought of grapes, but really don't want to have to cut the vines back every year... or have the fruit all over the place. Worried about it rotting and my girls eating the grapes.

Unless I have no clue what I'm talking about regarding grape vines...

 

[chickmashnoon]

maybe some edible vines? like malabar spinach? or chayote squash, some mexican sour gherkins, or other small cucumbers? If you don't want to prune, I'd go for something that is an annual like a climbing nasturtium or morning glory, altho Ive heard mixed reaction to whether Morning glories are toxic.

 

[leight54]

Nasturtiums! Be sure to read the seed pack and get the climbing kind - they're a little harder to find than the regular. Nasturtiums are human-edible, so I'm sure they'll be safe for the chickens too.

I've planted them and sunflowers around my coop. Can't wait to be able to cut the heads off the sunflowers and toss them in for the chickens. They're gonna love it!

 

[flnatv]

Quote:
I have grape vines growing up where my duck coop is going to be.

 

[CoyoteMagic]

Hope your run has a roof as my chickens used the vines to climb out of thier 8ft high run!!! Escape artists!!

 

[C&Rman]

Honeysuckle vines are great climbers and our peacocks don't eat them I dont think chickens willl....

 

[jinxschuh]

Glad to see this thread. I was thinking of climbing something or another along at least one side of the chicken run. Gives me some food for thought... I was thinking grapes too, are wilting/spoiling grapes bad for chickens? My 12 week old chicks LOVE grapes, if I do decide on a grape vine it will be interesting to see if they save me any... do you have to cut them back every year? There are people who live behind us with HUGE grape vines that cover their whole back yard fence, and then some, between their garden space and their yard. They didn't cut them back last fall nor this spring and they seemed to have greened up fine this spring and I assume they are gonna keep spreading. They don't use the garden space (thank goodness, because last summer the grapes where tempting enough to our beef steer that he jumped their garden fence from the pasture to get to the grapes <smacks forehead>) so the vines are taking over their whole garden space.

 

[chickmashnoon]

Rotten grapes? would that make drunken chickens? in my experience it won't be a problem- all the people I know are lucky if they get any fruit before the wild birds get to it -so for ripe fruit to last long enough to rot- well, I know around here it's unlikely.