Feeding chickens from the garden

[Ifitaintbroke]

It's a long term investment but I would recommend growing fruit trees. Flying Dragons would both feed and protect your chickens

Flying dragons?

 

[Red Mangrove]

Flying dragons?

It's a popular cultivar of citrus trifoliata, the most cold hardy citrus plant. Grows pretty much anywhere very easily

 

[Sally PB]

https://plants.ces.ncsu.edu/plants/citrus-trifoliata-flying-dragon/

Zones 5-9, is what I read, and it can become invasive in warmer areas. It's not sweet, though the juice can be used for jam. The plant has some nasty thorns too.

 

[BonnieBlue]

I don't know your growing zone (I am in 9a), but satsuma are a citrus tree that are fairly cold tolerant. Some varieties more than others. Plus, you will enjoy them too.

I have them in the ground, and in large planting tubs. The ones in tubs get brought to my porch for a couple of the colder months, but we have gotten down to 15 a couple of yearsn (highly unusual for here), and the one in the ground made it with no damage.

 

[saysfaa]

Winter wheat, buckwheat, clovers, alfalfa, grain sorghum, flax, oats

Spinach, kale, radishes, cabbage family, lambs quarters, purslane

beans (cook before feeding dry beans; soba is my first choice but I am far north of you so another might be better for you)

Small fruit: blackberries, choke cherries, sand cherries, crabapples with small fruit, wild plums, and such

Nasturtiums, cosmos (sulphureus and caudatus), dandelions

All these are doable without a tractor on a scale of providing diversity of forage on an acre. And I think will grow well that far south but I didn't check that for all of them.