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. 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. The chickens will be happier provided with both shade and entertainment. A 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.
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 possible, design a system with multiple runs to allow a crop of greens or grain to be grown for the chickens, in rotation.

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 Portulacca oleracea, Cleavers Galium aperine, dandelion Taraxacum officinale and Fat hen Chenpodium album.
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), arrowroot (available seasonally), New Zealand spinach syn. Warrigal greens, nasturtium and sweet potato leaves.

You can find books on poultry care here.