garden help! growing food for chickens

[cheldi]

Hi all!
I'm a persistently failing gardener lol. I've tried on/off for years with minimal success, but I'm determined! We've got 3 acres and the majority of it is cleared, usable land. Seems silly not to produce more than eggs with that space! Last year we fenced in a 20' x 50' garden. (We live in the woods of Pennsylvania with very high activity of deer, racoons, rabbits, etc) I planted a few things but it was mostly left empty and filled up with weeds. This year I'm determined to grow more food!
However... I'm 85% carnivore. Meaning, I eat very little plant foods. I will still grow the basic tomatoes and peppers for cooking, and I'll do pumpkins for fall. I planted some new elderberry shrubs last year and I hope to expand those.
What would you grow specifically for feeding chickens? We have a flock of 10 hens right now and I would like to use the garden to supplement their feed.
(I'm zone 6B and because our property is a clearing in old tall woods, our direct sunlight hours are kinda short.)

 

[Debbie292d]

The number one thing we grow every year JUST for chickens, is kale.

It's very nutritious and they love it. We either pick a bunch, hold it by the stalks and they pick from it, hang it in the coop so they have to jump up to get some, or lay it in the yard with a brick on the stalks.

We put down stakes and used chicken wire around our garden. That does keep the chickens out of it and usually the rabbits too.

We too don't like to plant much and yup, most goes to weeds anyway, but corn, sunflowers, squash, pumpkins, kale, always, and sometimes radishes, carrots, and beets. The tomatoes get blight so bad here so I bought a grow light and going to try those from inside the house this year, never putting them out.

 

[cheldi]

The number one thing we grow every year JUST for chickens, is kale.

It's very nutritious and they love it. We either pick a bunch, hold it by the stalks and they pick from it, hang it in the coop so they have to jump up to get some, or lay it in the yard with a brick on the stalks.

We put down stakes and used chicken wire around our garden. That does keep the chickens out of it and usually the rabbits too.

We too don't like to plant much and yup, most goes to weeds anyway, but corn, sunflowers, squash, pumpkins, kale, always, and sometimes radishes, carrots, and beets. The tomatoes get blight so bad here so I bought a grow light and going to try those from inside the house this year, never putting them out.

thanks! i've never tried kale because i won't eat it lol but that should grow well around here. with the high predator traffic, consideration for our neighbors, and no rooster rule, our chickens are never out of their big run. we have to go with 1/2" hardware cloth and underground apron, which we did for the garden as well. a few years ago i did a raised bed and the dang voles figured out very quickly to dig in from underneath! there's almost no point in trying to grow things here if we didn't do the mesh apron