Growing Your Own Chook Food

Keeping chooks supplies you with organic free-range eggs and chicken manure but the other advantages are less obvious. Poultry convert the inedible into the edible, turning kitchen scraps into eggs, reducing the need to compost. If you turn your orchard into a poultry forage system you will reduce your need for fertiliser, mowing and pest control. The chickens will be happier provided with both shade and entertainment. Chooks are very industrious when it comes to catching insects, particularly fruit fly and codling moth.
It is to your advantage to grow some food for the chooks as this will reduce feed bills and also provide the chickens with a healthy, varied diet. Chooks need plenty of greens for their health and as anyone who has watched chickens free-ranging will attest, they love their veges! Growing greens for your flock is a great way to make sure they get what they want, especially when other foraging options are few.
Depending on the space available, there are a few ways to create forage areas. A chook area with multiple runs will allow you to cycle crops of greens for the chickens, in rotation, by excluding the birds from areas while green forage crops are growing.
In urban areas where space is limited then chicken forages can be planted in the actual chicken run, but these will need protection from the chooks and their continuous scratching. Provide protection by placing wire cages around young trees. Scattering logs, concrete pavers or rocks across the top of the root zone of trees will prevent the roots being damaged by constant scratching. Fencing off areas of the chicken run will allow time for plants to establish.
If you are using a chook tractor or portable coop it should be moved regularly onto fresh grass. It is a great help in keeping pest problems to a minimum if you move the chook tractor onto a vege bed, once the crop is finished. The chooks will hunt down any pests, eat the last remnants of veges, scratch it up, manure it and with fresh mulch and few weeks rest, it will be ready to plant again.
Or you can set aside one or two garden beds for your poultry food plants and simply harvest an armful of greens every morning. A larger poultry forage system can be combined with an orchard, simply by placing in amongst the fruit trees, extra plants for chicken forage. The fruit trees will need to be well established before the poultry are introduced to the area, to prevent damage to young trees. Maintain the number of poultry at a level where a continuous groundcover is always present. If the ground is being completely bared, then you have too many chooks for the area.

Vines for Fences and Trellis
Banana passionfruit, black passionfruit, choko, grapes, cucumber, beans and Ceylon spinach.



Plants for Sowing in Rotation
Amaranth, sunflower, corn, millet, buckwheat, chicory, chickpea, plantain, sorghum, wheat, oats, barley, lucerne, clover, linseed and soybean (leaves only, seeds need to be cooked).




Trees and Shrubs with Fruit
Mulberry, lillypilly or other native bushfoods, persimmon, pawpaw, feijoa, cherry guava, tamarillo, custard apple, peach, banana (chop up the stems), fig, jaboticaba, grumichama, Brazilian cherry and pears.

Trees and Shrubs with Seeds or Pods (for larger areas)
Tree lucerne / tagasaste, wattle and pigeon pea.

Greens
Chickens love greens and will eat a wide variety. Don't underestimate the sheer quantity they can get through. It is a good habit to always give them the outside leaves of any big, leafy vegetable you have harvested from the garden such as cauliflower, cabbage, bok choy, old broccoli plants. They will not only eat the leaves but clean up any caterpillars or snails lurking amongst the foliage. They also enjoy a range of weeds, particularly chickweed Stellaria media, purslane syn. pigweed Portulaca oleracea, Cleavers Galium aperine, dandelion Taraxacum officinale and Fat hen Chenopodium album. Greens also supply chlorophyll, one of the reasons free range eggs have such a lovely deep yellow colour.
Clucker Tucker™ is a hardy mix of all-important greens to make providing these greens even easier!

Hardy greens that you can plant include:
Comfrey (available seasonally). Comfrey is easily the best herb to grow for chooks.
Arrowroot (available seasonally). Arrowroot is essential in warmer climates. It provides a cool refuge on hot days for the chooks as the high moisture holding stems create an air conditioned effect. The leaves are an attractive forage and you need a big patch to prevent it being decimated by hungry hens.
New Zealand spinach syn. Warrigal greens. It is a highly nutritious tonic food, rich in protein and B12. A very useful groundcover for more temperate areas. The juicy leaves are appreciated by poultry and it self-sows readily.
Nasturtium and sweet potato leaves.

Helpful herbs can be added to the daily greens or used in the nest boxes:
Catnip - insect repellent, use in nest boxes
Coriander - nutritious daily green with antioxidant properties, high in Vitamin A and K
Dill - antioxidant, relaxant, respiratory health
Bronze Fennel - believed to stimulate laying
Lemon Balm - antiviral, antibacterial, rodent repellent
Marigold - believed to stimulate laying
Marjoram - believed to stimulate laying
Mint (all kinds) - insecticide and rodent repellent
Nasturtium - laying stimulant, antiseptic, antibiotic, insecticide, wormer
Oregano - combats infections
Parsley - high in vitamins, believed to stimulate laying
Sage - antioxidant, anti-parasitic, general health promoter
Thyme - antibacterial, antioxidant and anti-parasitic
Find more information on herbs here.

You can find books on poultry care here.