[Stereo]

I only ask as we had some massive spare marrows (sounds rude but I'm not sure why) this year and gave them to the hens. They loved them and it must have saved us on food. They also had all the salad that had gone too far before we picked it.

So what's good to grow for chooks and what is bad? Can you give them too much fruit/ veg?

[chrismahon]

We try to give ours a balanced diet based on the fact that the pellets should have everything in them the birds need. So fruit and veg are limited to a treat basis Stereo. We have never seen the effects of a fruit and veg only diet. They need protein and it would naturally come from grubs. Without it they stop laying.


Our Orchard used to have apples which we stored for Winter treats. We grew Savoy cabbage which we either hung in the runs or fed them sliced leaves -makes the yolks a golden colour. Also grew sweetcorn and fed slices to the hens that were not good for freezing or eating by us. Most of them were on grass anyway. They liked brussel sprouts and hated carrots. They never had any potato scraps, which must be cooked anyway. Ours also had marrow offcuts and the seeds, but not all of them ate it. We've had two chickens that appeared 'drunk' after gorging on fallen pears and one had an impacted gizzard after eating damsons whole (she survived after a month of tlc and the trees were felled). Cherries were OK, but they got juice stuck to their heads which then got covered in dust and looked like a case of 'blackhead'.


We were hoping to grow our own sunflowers at some stage, but it's whether it's worth the trouble when that's a primary crop here.

[Q]

Our birds get to eat any oversized courgettes and spare lettuce which they love. They also eat any brassica leaves and we do grow extra sweetcorn just of the chickens. 
They also think dandelions are a delicacy, so I grow those specially on the allotment too 

[hughesy]

Ours are free to roam but excluded from the veg patch because they would eat everything in there.

[Bodger]

Like you Hughsey, we don't grow anything specifically for the chickens but anything suitably surplus from the garden gets slung to either the chickens, or more recently, to the pigs.

[hughesy]

Likewise the pigs take priority but there are a few things they don't like that the chickens, ducks and geese will eat. Kale springs to mind.

[Mammyshaz]

Ours get outer slug-eaten leaves of all the greens ( cabbages, broccoli, chard etc )  damaged tomatoes, pathetic caulis. Or basically anything slug/snail damaged except tomato and bean plants as these are toxic to hens but they afe fine with the tomatoes themselves 
We also leave excess  cabbages to give over winter as hanging toys to keep them occupied when grub findings are low. Ours  love dandelions too,  so of course we grow lots of these just for treats 
  tried to grow sunflowers for the seed heads but the cold wet days always kill them before seeds develop 

[Connor]

I would grow some lettuce and french beans for them but when all the veg is over for the year they go into the veg patch for about two weeks and get any left overs that i didn't harvest also they make the soil more fertile so we don't have to use any fertilizers which keeps our cost down!

[HesterF]

The only thing I grew specifically for them was sunflowers. Ironically the heads rotted pretty quickly so it wasn't such a great plan. Otherwise they get veg trimmings like the others have said.

[northfifeduckling]

Accidently, yes...I can tell what they like from when they made it over the fence into the veg plot - in the following order they went for: chards, spinach, kale, lettuce, sorrell, pea shoots and of course worms under any freshly planted onions.