Vegetation Dangers in the Yard?

[FaerieChickens]

I might have scared myself. This is our first foray into chickens. We have 8 babies who are nearly 3 weeks old, and plan to free-range them inside (hopefully) of our large fenced-in meadow-lawn and woods country yard. The yard has lawn, trees, woods, vegetation - you name it. I started reading the list of toxic plants,.. oh dear:

from http://www.poultryhelp.com/toxicplants.html
English ivy, azaleas, holly bushes (with berries!), chickweed, morning glories, boxwoods, clematis, columbine, iris, johnson grass, little wild onions, vinca, pokeberry, wisteria, vetch... and clover!

OMG are my chickens gonna survive this yard?

 

[kynewbchickie]

I might have scared myself. This is our first foray into chickens. We have 8 babies who are nearly 3 weeks old, and plan to free-range them inside (hopefully) of our large fenced-in meadow-lawn and woods country yard. The yard has lawn, trees, woods, vegetation - you name it. I started reading the list of toxic plants,.. oh dear:

from http://www.poultryhelp.com/toxicplants.html
English ivy, azaleas, holly bushes (with berries!), chickweed, morning glories, boxwoods, clematis, columbine, iris, johnson grass, little wild onions, vinca, pokeberry, wisteria, vetch... and clover!

OMG are my chickens gonna survive this yard?

I dug up our daffodils that are anywhere near where the chickens are going to be and just transplanted them on the other side of the yard. We have a TON of alfalfa clover in our yard - our home was built on land previously used as hay field and other than putting herbicide on the yard (which I refuse to do), we've done our best to dig up all the patches we found growing. Had the grass looked at and he told us it was an alfalfa/blue fescue/bluegrass mix and that we shouldn't worry too much. It's the amount of these plants that makes them toxic - so if you can limit their eating them at all, do what you can but don't kill yourself. Some of these things are going to grow and unless you want to spray your yard full of chemicals (which I think would be more toxic, imho), there's not really much you can do but be diligent in removing most of what you find - especially if it's present in large amounts.