Integrating Chickens Into Your Food System

Here are some thoughts and pointers I pulled together for my class "Integrating Chickens Into Your Food System".

Foraging Breeds

From books and online sources, these breeds can free range and forage much of their own food:

• Austrolorp
  
• Brown leghorn
  
• Buff Orpington
  
• Dominique
  
• Hamburg
  
• Leghorn
  
• New Hampshire Red
  
• Rhode Island Red
  
• Plymouth Rock
  
• Silver-Laced Wyandotte
  
• Sussex
  
• White Wyandotte
  
• Ameraucana
  
• Black Sex Link
  
• Red Sex Link
  
• Sussex
  

And thanks to Chris for a pointer to a good foraging meat breed, the Le Poulet

Best Chicken Pen Method

We've used a single largish free range area of ~3000 square feet for six hens. They keep the area fairly well denuded of ground covers, though we have successfully established trees and shrubs and a few herbaceous plants. The next time I design for chickens I'll adopt a rotating pasture method. I agree with most of the points made in Paul Wheaton's article, "concerns about the way most people raise chickens".

Chicken Tolerant Plants

Once we established these plants, our chickens did not eat or scratch them to death:

Latin name	Common name	Notes
Mentha x piperita	Peppermint
Sium sisarum	Skirret	Chickens don't eat it; not yet verified whether they'll scratch it to death
Hemerocallis sp	Daylilies
Chenopodium bonus-henricus	Good King Henry
Asparagus officinalis	Asparagus	Chickens do knock it over
Allium sp	Onions, garlic, etc	Chickens don't eat; uprooting depends on its root establishment. It helps that we get lots of coop scrap alliums; the chickens can only kill so many volunteers.
Solanum tuberosum	Potato	Ditto on lots of potatoes from coop scraps.
Malva sp	Mallows
Aachilea millefolium	Yarrow
Helianthus maximilianii	Maximillian sunflower
Angelica archangelica	Angelica	Not sure yet whether these biennials can maintain themselves via self-seeding
Levisticum officinale	Lovage
Armoracia rusticana	Horseradish
Petasites japonicus	Fuki
Urtica dioica	Nettles
Phyllostachys sp	Bamboo
Tropaeolum tuberosum	Mashua
Foeniculum vulgare	Fennel
Houttuynia cordata	Hot tuna

Chicken Fodder Plants

One tip I've read is to watch wild birds for what they like to eat. Plants our chickens like to eat:

Latin name	Common name	Notes
Symphytum officinale	Comfrey	Chickens tend to eat it to the ground mercilessly, but it generally stays alive. We're trying to establish enough plants for them that they won't slaughter them all.
Caragana sp	Pea shrub
Brassica oleracea	Kale	Chickens eat to death
	Berries, fruit trees	Raspberries, gooseberries, serviceberries, mulberry, wolfberry, cotoneaster, and so many more
Rheum x cultorum	Rhubarb	Chickens eat the leaves, but not the stems
Helianthus tuberosum	Jerusalem artichoke	Chickens eat the young shoots, but can't stop them from growing rampantly anyway
Scorzonera hispanica	Scorzonera	Chickens eat to death
Robinia pseudoacacia	Black locust	In theory chickens eat the seeds - ours don't seem to
Prunus sp	Kernels from pits of plum, peach, cherry, apricot, etc	Need to crack them open for the chickens - smashing with bricks or using a grain grinder works fine. Also edible by humans; see my old blog entries for more details
	Acorns / beech nuts / other nuts	Need to crack them open for the chickens, or allow to sprout in the chicken yard
Lemna minor	Duckweed	Chickens not nearly as excited about it as our neighbor's ducks, but they eat some
Oenothera biennis	Evening primrose	Read about this as chicken fodder - probably for the oil-rich seeds. Haven't tried growing it for the chickens yet
Apios americana	Groundnut	Read about this as chicken fodder - I think they'll eat the seeds, while you can harvest the root. Ours hasn't made any seed yet to verify
Trifolium sp	Clovers
Amaranthus retroflexus	Pigweed	Chickens don't eat the leaves, but do eat the seed. Presumably all Amaranthus sp would work
Chenopodium album	Lamb's quarters	Ditto
Elaeagnus umbellata	Autumn Olive	Berries of course, but the chickens also eat the leaves