Post your ideas: Growing food for chickens

[digitS']

I've grown and harvested fields of oats and wheat but not for chickens. Of course, once the grain goes into the elevator, who knows what happens to it

?

The sunflowers I had in the garden for the chickens last year were black oil type. I got the seed from a friend but I'm quite sure that she got them from the feed store.

I wasn't too casual about planting (tossing?) or harvesting. If you wait too long, the wild birds will harvest the sunflowers for you. Once they are cut, you may need to hang the seed heads somewhere to dry. The chickens can take it from there. They could probably go into the garden (if you don't have other veggies you want for yourself

) and you could simply cut the heads and drop them for the chickens.

Steve

 

[chickenannie]

digitS' :

I've grown and harvested fields of oats and wheat but not for chickens. Of course, once the grain goes into the elevator, who knows what happens to it

?

The sunflowers I had in the garden for the chickens last year were black oil type. I got the seed from a friend but I'm quite sure that she got them from the feed store.

I wasn't too casual about planting (tossing?) or harvesting. If you wait too long, the wild birds will harvest the sunflowers for you. Once they are cut, you may need to hang the seed heads somewhere to dry. The chickens can take it from there. They could probably go into the garden (if you don't have other veggies you want for yourself

) and you could simply cut the heads and drop them for the chickens.

Steve

Thanks, Steve, that's helpful info about the sunflowers. duh... I didn't even think about wild birds coming along.

I assume you harvested the oats by machine? I was thinking of crops that my chickens and turkeys could eat directly out of the field so I don't have to harvest them at all myself. My turkeys walk around looking for tall grasses with seeds at the top, and they literally use their beaks to strip the seeds off each blade.​

 

[Kadydid]

Sadly, the dismal California drought seems to have killed my sun chokes, and just when my chicas could really use them