Author: Anna & Mark

Chestnuts for the chickens

October 25, 2010 Posts No Comments

Cracked chestnutsI
got a batch of wormy
chestnuts that the
fruit stand was going to throw out, thinking that the nuts would be
perfect for my flock.  After a quick bang with the hammer to crack
the shell, I tossed a handful to the chickens, and was disappointed to
see the nuts being largely ignored.



Since my compost pile is
currently in the chicken pasture, I poured all of the chestnuts there
to dispose of them.  And suddenly my Chicken pecking at chestnutshens
got excited!  They pecked up all of the plump grubs that had come
out of the nuts and then looked up at me, waiting for more.



Although I have to
consider chestnuts a failure as chicken feed, my flock’s behavior makes
me wonder if there might be some way of using chestnuts as part of an insect
farm?


Our homemade chicken
waterer never spills
or fills with poop.

Chicken characters

October 22, 2010 Posts No Comments

PeanutI’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.”

Aussie chooks

Meanwhile, David Tough
sent me a photo of his “Aussie chooks.”  He wrote, “Herewith my
first offering – our Maurice with one Chickadeeof
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 Chicken swimming in the poollifeguard. 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.

Tick-trefoil and morning glories as chicken feed

October 20, 2010 Posts No Comments

Chickens pecking tick-trefoil off my pants leg.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 leaves and seedsTick-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 seed podMorning glory (Ipomoeae
purpurea) seeds
are mildly toxic, but our hens seem to like them in small quantities.

Morning glory seeds

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.


Our homemade chicken
waterer is perfect
for the forest pasture — we fill ours only every month or so.