What to plant in my chicken run?

[Brahma Chicken5000]

Hostas will be eaten to the stem by chickens. They especially like the new growth. Hydrangeas will be eaten as well. Maybe plant some azaleas & boxwoods and surround them with stones so that they can’t dig them up.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Do you want a pretty green space or greens your chickens can eat?
Keep in mind that the problems with growing things where chickens have been are compacted soil and high phosphorus.

 

[ButteCA]

I guess maybe my chickens are just gluttons they’ll eat any plant they can get to.

Mine too.

 

[coach723]

So far successful plants for me have been rosemary and butterfly bush. I put hardware cloth down over the root area to keep them from digging them up. They tried the butterfly bush at first, now leave it alone. They really like the rosemary and spend a large part of the day laying in and under it. I think it's aroma may help with the gnats we have. I also have grapes growing on their fence for afternoon shade, they eat the grapes, the roots are outside the fence so safe. I tried liriope grass, which one of my books said was chicken proof. They ate it all, don't have it any more.

 

[BuckeyeFoodie]

I never planned anything in my case because I know when the chickens are able to get in one of my raised beds everything in their last about 10 minutes before they’ve eaten in dug it out. Sometimes I’ll take shallow pans and plant lettuce and grass and bring it to them once it’s filled as like a treat but I don’t know that plants would last inside a run

Mine free-range quite at will (mostly to score all the spilled grain in the horse barn - little piggies!), so they tend not to destroy the plants in the runs. I'm more looking for a ground-cover type plant than a bush/ornamental type.

As for raised beds, I've got 3 ft chicken wire around the perimeter of mine, and the interior fence shared with the runs is either 6 foot chain link, or 5 foot chicken wire, and it works really well to keep them out of the garden!

 

[BuckeyeFoodie]

Do you want a pretty green space or greens your chickens can eat?
Keep in mind that the problems with growing things where chickens have been are compacted soil and high phosphorus.

I'm hoping for groundcovers that chickens can eat. And I'm planning on putting down a layer of paper weed-block, and then layering fresh compost on top, and locking the little monsters out for as long as it takes to let whatever I plant get nice and mature.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

In that case, you want things that are nutritious, palatable and if possible, things that are hard for them to kill.
Did you mention how many chickens would be foraging this 16X16 green space?
Grasses, while attractive, are not particularly nutritious or palatable for chickens.
Once established, alfalfa roots go to the water table so it fits the bill for nutritious, palatable and hard to kill.
Clovers will work too. Other things that are not perennial are also good for chicken forage - mustard, forage radish, turnip, buckwheat in summer and field peas, fodder beets, oilseed radish in winter. There is a forage type turnip called 7-top which puts most of its energy into top growth rather than a tuber. Though you may not want them, not all weeds are bad. One that is hard to kill but good for chickens to eat is dandelion.
If too many chickens will occupy this space, it may still not work.
Another option, after you get the plot planted is to build some ladder like frames and cover them with a 1X2 or 2X2 inch wire mesh so the greenery can grow up through to be eaten by the chickens but they can't scratch the roots up.