What to add to my run?

[cabela]

I have a small run for my 5 chickens and they have already pretty much eaten all the grass and green out of it. Does anyone have any suggestions on what to put in there for them for greens? I give them some grass, hay and other weeds/flowers but I am not sure if that is enough? Thanks

 

[mandalitten]

I am not sure if you are looking to grow something, or just feed them greens. I doubt you will be able to grow anything with 5 chickens in a small run.
I have some lettuce in my vegetable garden that my chickens love. Every morning and afternoon I give them a couple of leafs. I hold it in my hand, and they chip little pieces of it. They like it better when I hold it than when it's on the ground since they can tear of pieces of the leaf. I got the chickens a few weeks ago, and they were always a little afraid of me, but now they are a lot more excited when they see me since they think they will get a treat.. They even let me pet them when they eat, so it seems to be a good way to earn their trust

 

[cabela]

thanks, I do give them some treats and one lets me hold her, she's blind though and totally trusts me. I tried to get a pic on here, I was able to get it on my upload section but couldn't copy it over to here? I would just like any suggestions of greens to throw in there, lettuce is good Can I put the ends of raw green beans in there?

 

[cabela]

Cool, I got my pic on there!!!!

 

[mandalitten]

They will probably eat most vegetables (not hot peppers though), but in my experience they prefer stuff that's easy to chew. They love leaf lettuce since it's easy to chip (especially when I am holding it) to bite sizes. They don't like the stem though. You could try giving them ends of raw green beans, but it might be a little hard for them to eat.
My sister's in-laws have chickens and she said the take all food vegetable leftovers (potatoes, carrots, peel etc.) and boil it until it's soft and mash it together (like mashed potatoes). The chickens love it and they say the egg yolk is huge because of this.

 

[rocketdoctor]

Quote:
Birds are immune to the chemical that creates the spicyness in peppers so I wouldn't be suprised if chickens to like this. This allows pepper plants to be propaged by seeds in bird poop.

Im new to this but I find they eat most any fruit or vegtable I can give them they seem to really like the watermelon I gave them recently

 

[Hugerat]

Get one of those little suet feeder cages and fill it with greens and veggie scraps.

 

[Zahboo]

If you have a run that doesn't get wet you can put straw or shavings out there for them to dig in. Sand has it's fun too.

 

[HHandbasket]

I also have lettuce beds in my garden, as well as spinach beds. My girls also prefer to eat it from my hands rather than if I just put it in there. It is good bonding time between myself and my girls.

They also LOVE when I find fat, juicy earthworms in the garden and bring them over to the chicken pen. The Easter-egger, Bertha, has absolutely no interest whatsoever in the earthworms, though. Now mealworms... whole other story! She'll push her way to the front of the line to get to those, but turns her head up at the earthworms. I guess everybody has their preferences.

I also scatter alfalfa hay in the bottom of the run. It's good for them.

We expanded their run this week and added new nesting boxes (made from old bookshelves we got from craigslist and a couple of milk crates filled with straw and woodshavings/bedding). We moved them where they will not be as hot in the afternoons and will have more shade for more hours of the day, and we are going to completely relandscape the entire area around the chicken coop and run. Here's the original chicken ark with the new run attached. Roosting bars were added this morning, but I don't have a new pic yet. Will take new pics when the whole thing is finished.