what do you all do to keep your birds from being too bored all winter?what do you feed for treats?

[Bella Blue]

:/This is our first winter with our chickee doos! We live in oregon the weather can go from mild and raining to ice storms and severe winds. My girls have a coop with a heat lamp pointed one direction so they can either be under the heat or in the cooler parts of the coop.it hovers around 50 ish most nights. They have fresh water and layer pellets available all the time we feed them goodies like chopped spinach and live meal worms or night crawlers. Sometime they get cooked warm oat meal plain along w scratch and dried meal worms.

The weather is too cold for me to watch them in our yard.while its fenced we have had terrible problems with one neoghbors two cats trying to kill neighbors chickens and mine.I never leave my flock unatended and sit nearby with a garden hose ready to show the cats its not ok to be chasing my girls. How ever they do have a pretty large utterly safe run area and the bug "pickin's" are very slim this time of year in the yard. I think they may be spending more time in their run as I can't be catching colds trying to keep an eye on them this time of yr.

So what do you all do too keep your chickens from being too bored and avoid plucking or bullying in the winter ? I know what its like being cooped up no fun...but winter brings that for people too!

Looking for tips on things to keep them a little busy... thanks!:/

 

[jetdog]

Same here with the cabbage but I hang it like a tether ball just high enough so they can't reach it easy and have to jump a little.

 

[lin9]

I give them part of a bale of hay and an armload of weeds that I cut and dried in the fall. There are always some seeds in there, I also grow buckwheat and amarath and sunflowers for them. cut the stalks and store in fall. distribute during the winter.
Also, I grow wheat grass from seeds--they love that. They would pull out the grass by the roots if I let them, but I scissor off the greens. The remaining roots grow more grass in a week or less.

I give them bones after making soup and they get some exercise tearing that apart. Plus it saves our plumbing from grease build-up. This is NH, so I think it is OK for them to have animal fats.we buy local lambs

We have had varied success tossing them some of our composting worms.

A new thing we are trying is that, instead of cleaning out the bedding and poops from the coop interior ----out into the snowy compost area, I am stacking in in a corner of their plastic enclosure. If worms and bugs develop in that compost, the chickens can scratch in there.

No edible calories get tossed in a land fill from our house.

 

[Isschade]

Entertaining chickens in the winter ? Good grief, I've heard it all. I have enough trouble keeping ME from being bored in the winter. My chickens have bugs and seeds to find in the bale of straw I use for their winter bedding and if that's not enough then there are 7 acres of leaves to search under ... that's why they are free range. The day I have to "Entertain" my animals out in nature is the day I need therapy. I wish I could be outside in the winter .. I guarantee I would never be bored.

 

[NotableNancy]

I put a suet feeder in the run today but I put zucchini in it rather than suet and they pecked at it for hours! I'm going to try some other healthy veggies in there as the winter wears on.

 

[beverly evans]

I give them part of a bale of hay and an armload of weeds that I cut and dried in the fall. There are always some seeds in there, I also grow buckwheat and amarath and sunflowers for them. cut the stalks and store in fall. distribute during the winter.
Also, I grow wheat grass from seeds--they love that. They would pull out the grass by the roots if I let them, but I scissor off the greens. The remaining roots grow more grass in a week or less.

I give them bones after making soup and they get some exercise tearing that apart. Plus it saves our plumbing from grease build-up. This is NH, so I think it is OK for them to have animal fats.we buy local lambs

We have had varied success tossing them some of our composting worms.

A new thing we are trying is that, instead of cleaning out the bedding and poops from the coop interior ----out into the snowy compost area, I am stacking in in a corner of their plastic enclosure. If worms and bugs develop in that compost, the chickens can scratch in there.

No edible calories get tossed in a land fill from our house.

The wheat grass you grow---have you thought of doing the growing frames? They are 2x4 frames or double that height with 1/2 " wire on top, placed on top of your growing wheat. Every few days new growth will stick out the hardware wire. The chickens have access to the new growth but not the stem or roots and it will replenish itself in a couple of days if you only let the chickens get to it every few days. lol

 

[Bocrates]

"Featherball", aka cabbage tetherball, never gets old in our run. Chickens love jumping.

 

[24279102]

I can't keep mine in green cabbage. I hang them on the fencing and it keeps them occupied for hours. I have 20 chickens at the moment and some days it only takes one day for the cabbages to be down to the nubs !!

 

[24279102]

I have a couple of small ropes tied to the wire. Then I poke a hole through the top end of the cabbage with a screw driver and attach it with a zip tie so that the cabbage is about head height for them. It may take a little while for them to get used to it but once they figure it out it is quite fun to watch them playing tetherball ! I once went to buy cabbage and they were out so I bought red ones. Oh my gosh ! They were scared to death of them and wouldn't go into the coop. The mind of a chicken...

 

[KayTee]

I hung cabbage..not one peck..do you have to remove some of the outer leaves? Maybe they just like junk food

My girls go mad for Swiss chard leaves - they're like pirahnas when I hang a bunch up - but show them cabbage or cauliflower leaves and they look at me as if I'm trying to poison them! They will jump up to get chard leaves out of my hands, but don't even have a single peck at the other stuff. The same for beetroot - they fight over the boiled peelings, but aren't at all interested in the leaves (boiled or raw). They also change their tastes - last year I had to protect all my rocket salad plants, because they devastated them - wouldn't stop eating them, but this year they walk over the plants without a second glance!

That's chickens for you