Ideally, a backyard chicken flock enjoys plenty of fresh grass, weeds, seeds, bugs and other foraged foods, safe from predators and close enough to the coop to lay eggs conveniently in their nesting boxes.
And when you first build or place your coop and enclose a sizable area for them, it’s all beautiful, right? Here are some of my girls in their spacious yard, enjoying the grass:
But no matter how large you make their scratch yard, sooner or later, the reality looks like this:
Those are my chickens, pecking about in their once-green, now-barren packed dirt yard, only a couple months after the first picture.
We do free range our hens many evenings out of the week, but the reality is that foxes, raccoons, possum and hawks mean death to the hens if they are outside all day or when we’re not able to keep an eye on them. There are also neighbors to consider, and our unfenced garden.
With a large lawn, full of unfertilized, un-sprayed, untreated grass, dandelions, clover and other greens, we found a great alternative to the grain-only diet vs. life-threatening free-range dilemma: clipped grass delivered to them thanks to our bagging mower, several times a week (we don’t mow our backyard in full all in one day, but over the course of 2-3 days). Here’s a quick video of the hens enjoying the grass clippings (and a still shot is below the video):
The yard clippings make a great substitute on days when free ranging is limited or impossible:
Do your hens free range — and how do you manage predator threats? Have you ever fed them fresh, untreated grass from your lawn?
What a great idea! So simple, but you know, I’d never have thought of it! Something we’ll do when we get our chickens!
Kim, my husband thought of it, and I’m so glad he did because on days when their free-ranging time is limited, they can still get plenty of green grass. And I enjoy the workout the push-mower affords.
We do this a lot with our chickens and our rabbits. They love it!
That’s great! We don’t have rabbits currently, but when we did the kids would pick handfuls of grass and clover for them daily.
A word of caution on clippings. If your clippings are long, be careful as they can cause crop problems because the grass can lead to compaction. Normally, when free range, the hens can pluck off small bits. When they are pre-cut, they will gobble down long pieces which can get stuck.
Hi, replying to my own comment with a link with more info on this, as I am no expert:
http://www.the-coop.org/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=14117
Thank you so much for commenting and sharing this — I am going to research and find out more- – I do appreciate you bringing this to my attention. We tend to set the mower deck high (shorter clippings) but obviously free ranging is ideal.
At what age can you give grass clippings to chicks? Also, any reason it wouldn’t be ok to put a pine branch with soft needles hanging from their box for they to play and peck at, instead of pecking each other? Thanks for your time.