I’ve
still got a bunch of great photos to share with you from our 2010
chicken waterer photo contest.  The pictures in this
post are birds who struck me as true characters.  For example,
Linda Vanderhoef emailed me the photo on the left with a quick note:
“This is Peanut.  She almost died but is doing fine.”



Meanwhile, David Tough
sent me a photo of his “Aussie chooks.”  He wrote, “Herewith my
first offering – our Maurice with one of
his ISA Brown harem.”



Richard Brackett sent in
the photo on the left showing his darling Chickadee.



But the most personable
chicken we saw, without contest, was Dave Creighton’s rooster, Mr.
Spitz.  Dave explained that his silkie rooster regularly exercises
by swimming in the family pool.  “I put him in one day with my
stepdaughter and he tried to flap his way out.  He has been in
several time after that and does a small amount of paddling around and
I take him out.  The pool is high and he can’t be loose because of
our Husky pup, so I have become the lifeguard. We live in
northern Vermont and soon Mr. Spitz will be cooped up for the winter
unless he can learn to skate……”



I did my best to
discover whether Mr. Spitz enjoys these workouts, but it was really
hard to tell.  David replied to my question with another
anecdote:  “He went for what might be his last swim of the year
today….  He flaps some and then settles in for the rest of the
time.  He just floats and looks around, paddles some and when he
comes to me I take him out.”



The take-home
message?  Clearly, our customers love their chickens.  We’re
glad to be able to provide homemade chicken
waterers that are
good enough even for Peanut.

There
seems to be very little information in the literature about plants that
chickens particularly like on pasture.  So I’ve taken to sitting
with our flock now and then and watching what they seem excited about
eating.  Scratching through the soil for insects is preferred to
eating plant matter of any sort, but certain plants do get our hens
excited.  I’ve talked about chickweed in the past, and I have to
say that chickweed still seems to be near the
top of our hens’ list, perhaps because the girls had been in the
tractor for so long without access to succulent greenery.



Tick-trefoil (Desmodium sp.) seeds are another
favorite.  At this time of year, the triangular seed pods snag a
ride on my pants legs, and our hens will spend as long as I allow them
picking the cloth clean of hitchhikers.  I’m not surprised that
tick-trefoil is preferred since the species is a legume with,
presumably, high protein seeds.  Purdue’s
famine foods website
notes that people eat the seeds of one species of tick-trefoil in China
and the leaves of another species in Nigeria.



Morning glory (Ipomoeae
purpurea) seeds
are mildly toxic, but our hens seem to like them in small quantities.



I’ve read that
Ring-necked Pheasant and Bobwhite will eat morning glory seeds too, so
I assume my girls aren’t poisoning themselves.  The seeds are
quite large, so they probably give the hens a good dose of nutrition.



My goal is to manage the
forest pasture so that the chickens have a
wide variety of wild foods available at all times.  I’ll keep you
posted as I notice other chicken favorites in different seasons.