Hay for your birds?

[Clay Mudd]

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I donno.


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Yep.

 

[Clay Mudd]

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Pretty hard to beat fresh greens.

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Or something better.

 

[sheila3935]

I tried the alfalfa pellets they wouldnt touch them. Havent tied the cubes. I have bought the bales they dig through the small pieces and leave the rest, but mostly they get fresh when I can. I buy lots of cabbage in the winter that I can hang and keep them busy. I give kale which they love also the ducks.

 

[Avalon1984]

Fred's Hens :

You can also buy alfalfa in pellet form. $15 for a 50# bag. The pellet size is for horses and too big for chickens, as is.

But, here's the thing. If you put just a handful in a bucket and cover with an inch of water and leave it overnight. In the morning, the pellets have exploded into a huge size!!! They fluff into an enormous amount. You can experiment. See if your chickens will take to eating it as is. Or, you can mix into a pail of their regular mash or crumble. I've been mixing at a 4 parts mash to 1 part alfalfa ratio. It is a way of feeding greens to your birds when the grass is dead or covered with snow. It does wonders for the egg yolk color as well.

That's a cool idea! I'll haev to try that with my alfalfa cubes.​

 

[homesteadapps]

Clover and alfalfa leaves are a great source of protein. We save the leaves and soak them in water to make a mash and mix them with grain, etc. Seems like they eat more like this.

If you buy hay from a store then you are paying a premium price for the hay.

If you see any farms with cattle or horses on your drives in the country stop and ask how much they charge.

Around here we can get good 60 pound bales of alfalfa for less than $4.00 and clover for less than $3.00.

Another good place to check is craiglist.

 

[Tracydr]

I feed a flake of alfalfa about twice a week and/ or alfalfa pellets soaked. They love them, it's high in protein, calcium, lots of vitamins and makes the yolks orange.
In twenty five years of owning chickens, I've usually free ranged and they always hung out around the hay stacks. I never had an impacted crop. Can't say why but it makes me less worried about impacted crop. I don't free range now because I live in the city but my chickens do love alfalfa. The stems seem to end up as. Nice bedding for the run.

 

[terryg]

Tracydr- if the hens free range, they're more likely to eat a variety of food and not gorge on the hay. Also, it sound like you have nice leafy hay.

 

[kuntrygirl]

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I tried the alfalfa pellets as well and they HATED IT. They ate everything in the feeder except the alfalfa pellets. I will never buy that EVER again. I gave it to my sheep and goat to eat.

 

[islpet]

I prefer fresh greens too and I have a bed of mixed greens going right now for them. I use the alfalfa leaf because the goats will just waste a lot of it anyway. I just picked up a regular square bale of alfalfa today and it was $49 so I could buy a lot of fresh greens for that if it was just for the birds. I have seven baby goats right now (2moms) so I'm giving a lot of supplemental feed.

 

[Yonaton]

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Alfalfa, if cut at the proper time to make hay with, is very, very nutritious, and most anything that eats it prefers it's taste over most any other kinds of hays. It's not the easiest crop to grow, but not super difficult either. The main problem it has is that it gets attacked by more damaging bugs than other hay fields. I got one cutting fro my first alfalfa/grass mix 7 acre field years ago, then one day when it was about a week or so from the next cutting I went out to check on the field and almost had a heart attack...it had been attacked by some kind of weevil overnight and almost all the alfalfa was eaten up. Some sprays will stop this, but it's very expensive and is poisonous to birds and other small animals so I didn't spray and just stuck with the grass mixture from then on.

If you want your birds to have something that's almost as good for them and they'll like just as much and is easy to grow and no bug problems...sow your yard with white clover in the early spring. If they can't keep the 'flowers' down well enough, mow it, so that you don't get too many bees coming around, unless you're like me and don't mind the bees, then just let it grow and be great food for the bees, butterflies *and* the chickens, heh heh.