The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

Chickweed for the Chickens

Chickens eating chickweedI noticed that Lucy had jumped on my lettuce bed, ripping the row cover fabric (bad dog!), so I uncovered some strawberries in order to replace the fabric.  Under the thick row cover, the strawberries were green and happy, but so was chickweed --- luscious-looking growth that covered nearly the entire bed.  I ripped out the weed and carted it off to the chickens, who were thrilled to have such a succulent February feast.  I guess now I know why it's called chickweed!



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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Chickens and Chickweed
OMG!I have week old baby chicks and had read about chickweed and kinda had that aha! moment. So this afternoon i grabbed a small handful from my yard and brought some into them. Once they found the stuff it was on. They really should call that chickcrack. One would have a piece and the other chicks would tackle and run her down to peck it out of her mouth. There was plenty of the ground of their cage, but they were only preoccupied with the already found piece. This process continued until all the chickweed was gone. Then they scratched and scratched to find more treasure. I videotaped this it is hilarious! and I can't wait until my significant other gets home so he can watch the excitement. It's like a chicken hockey match!
Comment by Kristie Boucher — Wed Mar 25 16:13:34 2009
comment 2
Chicken races --- one of the joys of poultry ownership. :-)
Comment by anna — Thu Mar 26 20:49:18 2009
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