Author: Anna & Mark

If
you live as far as we do from the feed store, you’ll want to buy a
couple of feed sacks at a time.  But how do you keep that chicken
feed dry and mouse-free until your flock’s ready to eat it?



Many people build a
storage compartment into their coops, but I
knew that an extra fifty pounds of weight would be enough to tempt me
to skip moving our chicken tractors a lot of the time.  Instead,
we started out storing our chicken feed in plastic trash cans, which
were easy to move separately from our tractors as we pulled the flock across
the yard.  The plastic lids started to spring leaks
after a couple of years, though, so we moved on to plan B —
metal.  I have high hopes that this 31 gallon trash can (big
enough for 100 pounds of feed) will last longer.



Where do you store your
excess feed?  I’d be curious to hear if
you have another solution that’s portable, water-tight, cheap, and
mouse-free.

I’m always searching for
plants to add to the forest pasture and
produce more of our chicken feed on the farm, so I was thrilled to see
that Darren has compiled a list
of plants for the chicken run on his blog.  While you
should go check out the whole list, here are a few highlights that I’m
considering adding to our system:

• Darren
  notes that bamboo is useful
  for fast-growing shade and wind protection,
  but we’ve actually been thinking of planting edible-shoot bamboo in the
  forest pasture for another reason.  Not only can we eat the shoots
  and use the heavy canes for light structures, the traditional
  diet of wild chickens includes a lot of bamboo seeds.
• Jerusalem artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus) are something
  I’ve been considering planting for our own table, but am a bit leery of
  the reports of their invasiveness.  I figure that plants strong
  enough to be termed invasive are a good choice for the chicken pasture
  since they’ll stand up to heavy scratching.
• I root out burdock
  everywhere else, but it sounds like the weed is another good choice for
  the chicken pasture since poultry like the taste of the leaves and the
  plants are tough to kill.

What kind of plants have
you found that are able to stand up to the abuse of chicken feet and
still provide tasty food for the flock?