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32 Comments
Recently I threw some box elder boughs to the hens.
They usually shred or eat any green thing, but these have been ignored.
There might just be too much other stuff for them to deal with, between spring comfrey and lots of Aldi dumpster produce.
I’m glad that you’ve found a good use for the garlic mustard. But don’t kid yourself, it displaces native plants and whole ecosystems in North America. It is usually very bad for local biodiversity.
Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage organic grocery chain saves their produce scraps in a giant bag and you can get them for free if there is one in your local area.
Can you give us a update on your PawPaw and are you selling any paw paw??
Never having heard of a hori hori before now, my tool of choice is serrated steak knives. I worked many years in restaurants. They must be removed from the restaurant if the handle is damaged. I volunteered to remove them.
Can’t say I’m a fan of dandelions, my chickens don’t seem to really eat them either that I have noticed anyway? But we have thousands of dandelions on our property and the chickens do get to free range from sun up to sun down everyday as the chickens want to go out and free range. Naturally when weather bad the chickens don’t go far from the coop usually and stay under cover. Either inside the coop or under the coop since their coop is 3 feet off the ground. I planned it that way so the chickens would have a 12’X 12’ covering under the coop to stay out of the rain. Which the chickens agreed it’s a good place to hide from getting wet! Anyway, I’m fairly new to raising chickens, kind of learning as I go along. A lot of what I do is trial and error and hopefully have more success than errors? Which that in mind, I’m planning on plowing up a considerable amount of property in my front field where my chickens live at majority of the time. Even though they do roam all over our 5 acres too! But I’m hoping to encourage the chickens to spend more time on the front field by giving them basically their own chickens garden growing anything from clovers to other vegetables chickens like to eat. Let the chickens have their own way with their garden growing and see how it goes? Depending how it works, may have to keep the chickens out for a while till some plants grow more? Again it’s an experiment for me to see how well it works feeding the chickens and keeping feed costs down hopefully? Of course always glad to listen to others ideas too! I’m always open minded to learning other ideas. Especially the better ideas then what I have! 😂
Wise words – I had the same evolution of thinking behind me. When I started out gardening I "hated" dandelion because it was overgrowing everything. Now after some years I had been able to clear the spots from dandelion where I dont want it to grow and the rest is welcome food for my hens.
Thanks for what you do, you inspire and give food for thought with every new video!
Ahh chicken TV.
I just dump it in a big pile and by the end of the day it's all been spread out and flattened. (I'm a big fan of letting the hens do the work so I can save my energy for other projects!) I dig out the roots and all in a clump so there's usually bugs and worms in the mix too, which is even more exciting for them. There are always plenty more dandelions anyway without leaving them to re-sprout. 😅
happy chicken sounds 🙂
What I always say WRT weeding. I'm either collecting hens feed or compost material. Sometimes I'm collecting a wild salad for myself! 😁
I just managed to get my hands on some Azolla. Apparently full of vitamins a mineral for practically all animals. It apparently doubles and triples itself within days. Very nutritious from horses and cows right down to chickens and rabbits. I’m assuming you have your own variety of Azolla there. We have 2 natives here in Australia. Most farms end up with it growing on there dams.
Love it, been gathering weeds everyday for our chickens and ducks. I have my neighbor on board as well who loves bringing the girls fresh weeds every few days. Been gathering leaf bags as well for the runs and compost heaps which the girls love. Yesterday my clothes line was full of leaf bags drying out to save.
In the 1950s I raised chickens in dry, West Texas. To save money, I would drive to a location near a small lake where Johnson grass grew in ditches on the side of the road and I would cut large amounts of this grass to feed mi chickens. While performing that function, I saw a rattlesnake trying to escape from a King Snake. It failed and was devoured.
Hi folks! If you enjoyed this video and want to support our work, please give a thumbs up and consider subscribing! Even better, share this video in lots of other places so new folks can learn more about nourishing their hens for next to no cost while also building amazing soil.
Thanks and enjoy!
Our hens are kept in their pen right now because they make a mess of the annual garden. I do let them out for the last couple hours of the day to forage, so I have to keep an eye on them to keep them away from our seedlings. Watching them, I notice they love eating plantain and scratching up worms and bugs. The rooster keeps an eye on the girls as well and makes sure they all come back to the pen at night.
Just because a chicken can eat something without it being acutely toxic don't mean you should feed it to them. The random scrap feeding with make your meat and eggs contain higher levels of toxins. It will also negatively effect the quality of their manure. It is cool if you don't want to listen, I understand believe me. However if you want to create better chicken and eggs you will feed your chickens less high carotenoid containing plants and plants with less overall chemical defenses. Weeds have lots of these, there are less than 25 essential minerals for humans the others are toxic.
After following the Edible Acres journey since last summer, it feels extra good to watch this video knowing I've now been able to implement some of these practices. The chicken yard is taking shape. Can't wait to start on some water catchment.
Learning a lot, & starting my 3rd summer trying to do the same with my duck “family”😉 just a bit different
Another fantastic video!
Excellent idea on chicken weeder thought! Goats are used for broadscale, why not chicken on the lot scale? Cool!
Was just doing this with my chickens yesterday! We’re introducing two flocks together and there was no fighting or pecking because everyone was so interested in the greens. Good nutrients and also apparently a social ice breaker. 😄
I love this idea! I'll definitely identify the weeds in our yard and see which ones the chickens like 🙂
Awesome, I do the same thing with my rabbits. They always eat the best, dandelion, dead nettle, plantain, etc.
Thanks for highlighting these plants! I have been ripping out garlic mustard the past few years, exactly for the reason you mentioned: our neighbor (a master gardener!) was on a crusade against them, he even asked if he could pull them out in the shoulder along our property. Now I'll definitely add them to the chicken-compost. I've been wanting to ask your opinion on the ban on currants and gooseberries, still active in some states and towns. This year, I tried to order both from a nursery in my state, 28 miles away, that legally can grow both, yet is not allowed to sell them to my location! I then found out that this ban exists in my town (but not in all towns in Massachusetts). Apparently, about a hundred years ago it was discovered that a White Pine-killing fungus (white pine blister rust) also uses currants and gooseberries. Since then, resistant plants have been developed, and so the ban is now lifted in many states. Do you think continuing a ban in places like my Western Massachusetts town is justified?
I fed a bunch of garlic mustard to my friends’ chickens this spring. It’s such a destructive plant in our context (spreads uncontrolled, smothers spring ephemerals, bad for biodiversity and resilience), and it felt good to simultaneously get the garlic mustard out of the woods and give the hens a snack.
Absolutely wonderful as always Sean. Thank you so much! 😍💚🙏🌱🍄🪱
Looks like a good time. My girls were hard a work making me a new garden bed today. They are going to sleep well tonight!
Sean, I’ve read that garlic mustard spreads so intensely because there aren’t the natural limitations that it has in its original habitat (makes sense). I’ve also read that it has allelopathic (sp) qualities and should be put in the trash like poison ivy, not added to the compost pile! The latter seems a little hysterical to me (there are loads of other plants growing around and among it), but I haven’t found any research on the subject. Do you know?
Can I please ask when you grow cuttings straight in the ground, do you leave them for rest of year, or do you transplant at some point in season to a shady area of yard? If so, what point in the season do you do so? Thanks!
From 🇷🇺 with ❤️!
My bantoms won't touch pulled weeds n don't root much.My ex batts eat anything n root like nobodies business.Those ladies love their freedom.