Tulip Foliage?

[ClareScifi]

I think my problem stems from having raised my pet rooster in my indoor solarium. His StepMama nearly pecked him to death when he hatched and for a long time afterwards she would have nothing to do with him, so the solarium became his home. Because he was bored with no playmates, he became an amazing stripper of plant leaves. There went my bamboo, my dracaena plants, all the geraniums. He ate everything! Or at least chewed it up and spat it out. I took him to the vet, worried he had ingested too much fibrous plant material because his crop was stuffed, but the vet said he was fine, that he just suffers from Piggy Disorder (chowhound).

Ripping up all my plants sure kept his beak nice and sharp. And all that greenery and vegetation he ate was good for his brain, I feel. He precociously began crowing at only 7 1/2 weeks old, and his first crow came out perfect sounding.

When he walks past my tulips in the raised bed outdoors in his run now, he just can't help ripping off some of the foliage with his very sharp beak. I think it brings back fond memories of his chickdom, devastating my solarium. HAHA.

That is quite a good-sized rhubarb leaf. Yum. Rhubarb pie! I have a rhubarb plant, too.

 

[spikennipper]

Every year when the blue bells come up in my garden my chickens like nothing more than eating the foliage, they do actually eat it and seem to go to it every now and then to get their fix! I know it is toxic but it never affects them, they don't have regular access to grass so maybe this is why perhaps they just need greenery or maybe they just eat a bit as a herbal medicine against worms perhaps?

 

[ClareScifi]

That could very well be, spikennipper.

I was shielding myself with a an old mulching fir branch yesterday, in case my roo thought I was a monster and decided to peck, when he started eating the needles on the branch, forgetting all about me... I had to giggle. He has always loved to eat sharp, dried out fir needles. I think they must work like grit? I noticed the hens do it, too.

 

[ClareScifi]

P.S. Thanks for the warning. I'm glad my bluebells are planted far, far away from the chickens.

They already ate the buds off one of my new lilacs (I think it would have bloomed for the first time this year, but not now), and last year they ate the buds off my white irises. I don't let them near my honeysuckles anymore, because I saw them chowing down on those buds a few weeks ago. They also ate up all my new baby Roses of Sharon I was growing just outside of their run for shade! They ate off all the grape hyacinth foliage, but I think I got those plants covered in time, so I MAY get a few blooms. They stripped the garlic chives, but I covered those up immediately, and they are coming back, too. Not sure whether they got all the Shasta daisies or not. It's a constant challenge. I wish they would just stick to the lespedeza, but they have such adventurous palates. I like to let them free-range, but not when they get into my flower garden.