Cover Crops
I love growing cover crops. If you like jigsaw puzzles or chess, you will, too: Despite the challenges to pulling it off—both in space (a garden that is simultaneously used to grow food crops) and in time (all four seasons)—maximizing cover cropping year-round brings so many improvements to soil fertility and texture that no opportunity to sneak in a cover crop should be missed.
Fortunately, cover crops can do double duty as green feeds for the flock. We can cut the greenery to carry to the flock—it quickly regrows—or let the chickens till in the plants as they dine.
Note that I no longer bother growing fall crucifers—mustards, winter radishes, raab, kale, rape, turnips—as separate garden crops: I just sow them as fall cover crops, and there’s a gracious plenty for everybody—the soil food web, our poultry, and us.
Weeds
Mixed cover crop, haute cuisine for a mixed flock. Photo courtesy of Bonnie Long.
Weeds may annoy gardeners and landscapers determined that nothing grow on their place they didn’t plant, but many wild plants with a mind of their own make valuable contributions to flock nutrition; and some (dandelion, lamb’s-quarter, nettle, burdock, yellow dock) are higher in protein than alfalfa. Poultry relish them all.
Take dandelion, toward whose demise millions of dollars are dedicated every year but so nutritious as a cooked or salad green that herbalists extol it as superfood and medicinal.
In addition, it is a dynamic accumulator: Its taproot grows into the deep subsoil and mines it of minerals, especially calcium, which it makes available to more shallow-rooted plants. (Both the fertility plants discussed on the previous page—comfrey and nettle—are also dynamic accumulators.)
Things to Consider With Weeds
Of course, such friends may not be equally welcome in all parts of the garden, orchard, and landscape, so remember that weeding chores can furnish valuable green fodder for the flock. The most useful weeds where you live will vary. The few that are toxic vary as well, so familiarize yourself with ones that could be hazards for poultry where you live.
Examples of toxic plants are castor Bean (RICINES Communis), Milkweed (Asclepias SPP.), Immature Beris of Nightshade (Solanum Nigrum), Oleander (Nerum Oleander), Jimsonweed (Datura stramoniumniumniumniumniumniumniumniumniumi (Berries of Phytolacca Americaana), and yew (Taxus Spp.). Such plants are rarely a real threat to chickens, however—most they avoid instinctively.
Note that in some cases it is not the plant that is the threat but the mature seeds. For example, hairy vetch (Vicia villosa) is an excellent nitrogen-fixing cover crop and its foliage is edible for poultry, but remember that its seeds are toxic. Chickens are unlikely to eat jimsonweed but may eat its seeds. Seeds of both plants have been implicated in actual poisonings of poultry.
Feeding Your Flock With Edible Weeds
Once you’ve identified the toxic plants to look out for, feel free to experiment with harvests from weeding nontoxic species. Weeds vary in mineral content, so the wider the range of weeds available to the birds, the more likely their mineral intake will be in balance.
In most temperate areas, the following palatable weeds should be common. Many of them make fine people food as well.
- Prickly lettuce (Lactuca serriola), likely to show up in shady areas.
- Purslane (Portulaca oleracea), rich in omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals.
- Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), superfood for chooks as well.
- Lamb’s-quarter (Chenopodium album), one of whose common names, “fat hen,” hints at its utility as poultry feed.
- Yellow dock (Rumex crispus), rich in vitamin A, protein, iron, and potassium, though it should not be overfed because of its oxalic acid content.
- Chickweed (Stellaria media), how do you suppose it got its name? Common and prolific, both the plant and its seeds are highly nutritious feed.
Grass Clippings
If your situation prohibits bringing the flock to the pasture, bring the pasture to them: Lawn clippings—from lawns that have not been treated with toxic chemicals— are excellent fresh forage. Short, rapidly growing grass yields the highest levels of nutrition. Do not feed too large a volume at one time—excess clippings accumu- late into an anaerobic, slimy mess. If you are using your birds to work compost heaps, however, you need not worry about feeding too many clippings—the chickens will work whatever they don’t eat into the heaps.
