Eating the grass?

[Joe.G]

Devora are they fenced into that area? Man mine stay on the edge of the wood line and dig in the woods the most, Id be very angry if my lawn looked like that, I am a lawn freak.

 

[RedStarLady1207]

I've had my chickens for less than a month and I have three random dust bath holes. I move the coop/run every day and they eat the grass, mostly the tips. They LOVE clover and strip it down hard, but not the roots or runners. I give them plantain and dandelion leaves (new shoots) that I have to collect from 'other' parts of my lawn.

I cannot use my whole lawn for the coop/run, the back is a mix of just about everything and I don't use any products on the back lawn, but since I have to 'hide' my chickens I am stuck to about 1/3 of my back lawn to move my coop/run to a new spot each day.

There about 10 places I can put it and still have it level and nobody can see it. Because of this I have to really pick up the poop on the lawn each time so they don't have a nasty place I move the coop back to in such a short time frame. My 3 Red Stars are deforestation experts even with trimmed beaks (I didn't do it!). They go for flying things, like a hapless moth, but they ignore the live earthworms I put in and eat the dried mealworms. Go figure. I wish I had more places to move the coop - it is probably not healthy to have so few locations, but if I move it each day, the plants (mostly grass) grows back. I keep it watered if no rain and raked. My hidden chicken area has my wooded area behind it with an over hanging wild black cherry tree (Prunus serotina) which drops some leaves through the whole leaf season, and when they wilt, they are poisonous (cyanide).

 

[aggiemae]

I think it takes them some time to get used to scratching. I was putting then out as the weather allowed for the past two weeks and they have been out from sun up till nearly sun down every day for about a week now. About three days ago they figured it out. Yesterday I was amazed at how well they did but tonight there wasn't a single weed or blade of grass left standing in the 4x6 spot where I moved the portable run just this morning. I only have six chickens and they are 9 weeks old.

I also saw my first real full on dust bath today. If I hadn't read about it here on BYC's I would have though the hen was dying.

 

[Dynahoe Dave]

oh, they'll help "mow" the grass too? Excellent.

 

[devora]

Devora are they fenced into that area? Man mine stay on the edge of the wood line and dig in the woods the most, Id be very angry if my lawn looked like that, I am a lawn freak.

Nope. My babies free range all day. This area is closest to their run so they chose it to conquer.

Angry? Oh, I'm too beaten down by chicken insanity to be angry.

They have won, I now look forward to being ruled by my Chicken Overlords.

 

[GrandmaChickie]

Devora, you're just looking at it the wrong way. Now I have "chicken minions" (which my family thinks is hilarious, especially when I yell, "Attack, my chicken minions!" and they just look at me), whom I graciously allow to dust bathe anywhere in my fair kingdom. You see how that sounds so much better?

 

[n8ivetxn]

We recently built a new coop / run for the kids and DBF said we should make sure we could get in it with a lawn mower

I told DBF we didn't need to mow the lawn in the run. My DBF didn't believe me....now it's a dirt pad, he's seen the light!

 

[yorklady]

LOL!

 

[Jersey101]

GrandmaChickie - Haha that was brilliant! So going to tell my mum this next time she complains a chicken has eaten one of her plants our chickens definitely appreciate having us as kind and generous rulers

 

[Dynahoe Dave]

Glad to see they will mow the run. I was worrying about how I'd deal with weeds & stuff growing in the run. I plan on having a good sized one, for when we know there are predators about, but still want to free range mostly.