Toxic Plants

[CODevlin_4]

Hi! We're starting to prepare for our chicks (we won't be bringing them home till mid-April) and I was looking through the list of toxic plants and realized that I have several in my yard. Tulips, Daffodils, Iris and fern. Do I need to take the plants out? Would a small edging fence work to keep the chickens out? Or do they just instinctively avoid certain plants? Thanks!!

 

[elmo]

Welcome to the forum!

Chickens will eat anything green in their run eventually, no matter how bad it tastes. So I would definitely not have any potentially toxic plant inside the run. Outside the run, for free ranging, they will tend not to eat, or eat much of, things that are bad for them. But you still have to keep an eye on things, and if you notice your chickens chowing down on something toxic, fence it off. Usually if you put a wire edging around 3 feet high closely around the plants you want to protect, that can work if there's no open space that the chickens can jump down into.

Many plants are toxic, but few are actually so toxic as to be dangerous. A lot of the toxic plant pages on the internet don't really make that distinction, or make it clear what part of the plant can be the problem and to what kind of critter. The other thing is that many of the online resources only use the common and not the scientific plant name, which can be confusing.

Here are some good references on the subject:

http://www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/other.html

http://www.vet.purdue.edu/toxic/cover1.htm

For example, we have English ivy in our backyard, which is on many toxic plant lists. I was worried about having to try to get rid of it, because that's an awful job. A very experienced poultry keeping friend of ours, who is also a landscape architect, advised me not to worry about it. He said the chickens wouldn't bother with the ivy as long as it was outside of the run. He was right! They scratch in and under the ivy, but don't eat it.

 

[Imp]

Elmo's right on.

I have a couple different ferns and irises in my yard with the chickens and they have never touched it.

Imp

 

[CODevlin_4]

Thank you so much! That's great news, it would be quite a chore to dig up all the bulbs. There's none in the run, or anywhere close to the area where we plan on putting their coop so I think we're ok there.

I love getting the pro feedback, this is great! thanks again!

 

[GammaPoppyLilyFlutter]

Chickens are pretty good at knowing which plants are toxic and which ones are not. I have a bush of red berries in my yard that I'm pretty sure would make a chicken sick, and she chickens don't eat the berries- even if they fall on the ground.

 

[debid]

Ditto the others. As long as it's not the only thing around that's green, they'll stay away from the toxic stuff.

When we went out to set our foundation blocks, the entire area for the run was blooming with trout lilies. I didn't think anything was growing there but moss! So, I did a little research and learned that they're edible from flower to corm. I still feel a little bad about letting the chickens eat something so beautiful. They've clearly been there a long time to be blooming (it takes years for them to start). The only thing that makes it sort of OK is that they continue on far past the chicken zone in profusion and they're not rare.

 

[flgardengirl]

I grow brugmansia, datura, philodendren and a ton of other toxic plants. If my chickens really wanted to eat them they would of all been dead along time ago. I do let them freerange and they don't bother the 'bad' plants. They will eat the tomatoes and good stuff from the garden

It is only common sense not to plant things you know are toxic into thier runs. If they are starving at some point for whatever reason or just bored they might eat anything. If they are freeranging they have a greater choice of things to eat and do.