PLANTS AROUND THE RUN

[Flockincrazy]

Monkey grass and cherry tomatoes

 

[Weetamoo93]

My chickens are obsessed with chives. I'm growing it in pots to rotate drive m since they'll eat them to the dirt. Bonus: they propagate via division and seeds, so it spreads very easily.

 

[333113]

My chickens are obsessed with chives. I'm growing it in pots to rotate drive m since they'll eat them to the dirt. Bonus: they propagate via division and seeds, so it spreads very easily.

I always heard from my grandmother and my neighbors that we shouldn't let our chickens eat chives or wild garlic because it would flavor the eggs. As a child, I earned 5 cents a bucket to pull wild chives and garlic out of my neighbor's field (they raised laying hens). That was a lot of money for a kid in the 1960s!

Now, I have my own laying hens, and there are still wild chives in our fields, but I don't notice a difference in egg flavor when they are eating wild garlic/chives or not. I would be interested to hear any opinions on whether wild garlic or chives affect egg flavor.

 

[CluckerFamily]

My flock loves hostas! They continue to destroy the same colored hostas every year, the green hostas with a white border on each leaf. This must be tastier than the other hostas. These could go on the shade side. And herbs would be great on the sun side.

 

[erose15658]

I grow sweet potato vines over my pens. They provide quite a lot of shade and the leaves and stems are edible. And they are pretty!

My dad used to plant cherry tomatoes along the pen. His pens were about three feet high. Anything that grew into or over the pens belonged to the chickens; the rest was ours.

This is great!!! Thank you!!!!

 

[erose15658]

Thank you- great idea.

 

[drinkoj]

We are new parents to 23 beautiful chickens!! Our chickens have eaten all of the grass in three connected 8x8 runs as well as anything they can stretch their necks out for around the run!! We can not free range because the risk of predators is very very high! One side of the run is in full sun and the other full shade. What plants can I put around and or in the run so the girls have something to pick at?

We're planting spearmint in planters and putting them around the outer edge of our run so that we can strip some off and throw it into the run for them. It's such an invasive type of plant, we don't want to plant it in the ground. We're doing the same with thyme and basil.

 

[Birdielee]

Welcome!
Your easiest plan would be to use deep litter in the runs, because the total run space that you have per chicken really won't allow rotational grazing without overcrowding the two pens while the third regrows. Bagged shavings, wood chips (not all black walnut or cedar), grass clippings, hay, straw, weeds, whatever, will be loved by them, as they dive for bugs and worms, and turn it all into compost.
Plantings around the outside can be shrubs for more summer shade, and as mentioned, most of the herbs aren't eaten, and that includes catnip. I think that trying to protect edible plants inside these runs will take more effort than it's worth, and all that manure on dirt, plus rain, won't be so nice over time.
Your run area does drain well, I hope! Mud will be awful!
Mary

Does deep litter require a roof to be pleasant? Not a moldy mess

 

[RebelChief]

This guy has a bunch of great ideas for growing in the run. Check him out:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLihFHKqj6Jeog3qoYlmhOPt_eElEhNMpH

 

[RebelChief]

I have 3 screens with grass growing underneath. I'm going to make some wire fence rings and start growing some stuff in those so I can pull them up and move them over a bit to allow them to scratch around a bit without them killing all of it.