which veggies , fruits and greenies do u give in the winter and in the summer?your top10?

[strangeanimal]

Hi I was wondering what chickens eat the most of vegetables and fruits you give them and what you give them according the changes of weather so what is like your top 10 during summertime/spring and what in wintertime and before ?

I feed a lot of variety , depending on harvest and I jump like the whole planet on sales too
My personal top 10 during summer :
1. lettuce
2. melon !! ( not the watermelon yet )
3. watermellon on the warm days !!
4. tomato !
5.appels
6. bananaaaaa
7. anything that grows and is fresh on the field ! (free ranged)
8. blackberries
9. blueberries
10.raspberries

winter top 10 :
1. beans
2. corn on the cob
3. kale
4. banana
5. squash
6. pumpkins
7.tomato
8.berries
9. sprouted grains and beans
10. spaghettisquashes and all that is still left from the summer and purchased goodies

so this was my top 10 but usually they get everything because who amongst the chickens does not like your leftovers ?

 

[Wolfgang B.]

Summer:

1. canned corn
2. tomatoes
3. Cucumber
4 water melon
5. Bananas
6 oats
7 lettuce

Winter:

1 canned corn
2 cat wet food
3 oats
4 bananas

Not the longest list lol.
We're not feeding them cucumbers and tomatoes in winter because It's not worth it for our chickens to put energy into digesting them only for getting water out of it.

 

[lazy gardener]

Summer: free range, grass clippings, excess/overgrown garden veggies.

Winter: sprouts: Wheat or Barley, millet, BOSS.

Year round: fermented feed.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Summer: whatever they find to forage on, garden excess and scraps, kitchen excess and scraps, orchard excess and scraps, whatever mice I manage to trap, and occasionally other "animal protein".

Winter: whatever they find to forage on, kitchen excess and scraps, whatever mice I manage to trap, and occasionally other "animal protein".

Other animal protein may be parts of other animals I trap or when I butcher I save certain parts to feed back to the flock.

 

[jeria]

Lazy gardener, do you plant trays of wheat and millet in the winter for those sprouts? I seem to remember some sort of pans full of matted sprouts on here last winter when I was researching. I don't remember how they grew them. My girls do like their green weedy goodies and I figure some greens are really good for them all year. Veggies to buy get pretty expensive in the winter here and I don't want to give them a lot of chemically sprayed trimmings that I could probably get from a supermarket.

 

[lazy gardener]

I sprout in wide mouthed qt. mason jars. I keep 3 or 4 of them going all the time. Sometimes, I place them in a plastic window box planter, upside down so they can drain well. When they get almost ready to feed, I set them on my window sill so they can green up. Keeping them in the kitchen is handy, b/c I'm often working at the sink, and it's easy to just grab the jars and give them a quick rinse. I use window screen or plastic needle point canvas cut to fit inside the metal ring of the jar, or you can buy these:

 

[jeria]

Thanks. I grow my inside sprouts for me with an old almost worn out or mismatched sock pulled over the top of a canning jar to drain them. It also provides a dark environment until you want to open it up to green I the light when almost ready to use. Have done that since the 70's when sprouts weren't readily avail except in oriental stores.
So a plan to grow successive jars say one for each day and dump the contents of that jar into the feed/bedding and start a new jar for the next round. Sounds like a plan and easy. Some could be used my me in smoothies, salads, and various dishes and give what remains to the chicks. Awesome!!! Just me so I don't use that much. I love putting sprouts in my morning breakfast smoothies. 7 jars, some whole grains, old socks and I'm good.

 

[lazy gardener]

The only down side to your plan: based on where you buy your grains. If you buy them at a health food store, the cost is going to be quite high to sprout for your flock. If you buy the grains from a feed store as feed grade grains, the cost would be much lower. BUT, I'm not sure that I'd be comfortable sprouting feed quality grains for my own use. Would most likely be just fine... But... I don't know...

I get by with 3 - 4 jars, occasionally 5. They sprout fast. I like to feed them out before the sprouts are more than an inch long. This gives me a jar/day for the flock. May need to do more based on increased # of birds this season.

 

[jeria]

It would be feed grains for the girls. Oats, millet and milo are plentiful to pick up as 50# bags at feed stores and they sprout well. Milo (sorghum) might make them fat with the sugar content of the grain. We used to use it for the horses in the winter.

 

[lazy gardener]

So far, I have barley and BOSS for this season. After reading about millet, I may sprout some bird seed millet for the girls, and see if hulled millet will sprout for me.