The Farm: Spring Forage: Chickens and other Animals

 

    There are several plants in the yard that chickens love to eat in spring. Most of these will last only until summer's heat. A few things come back in fall when the weather cools, but not as vibrantly or profusely.

    Chickweed and henbit are two obvious choice morsels as their common names tell us. They are right now bigger than the tiny clover, dandelions, and grasses.

    Chickweed (stellaria media) is a real favorite around here, not only for the chickens but as people food and as a tincture (which I will describe in the food and healing topics). It is an early spring plant and the tiny five-petaled blossoms come fairly quickly. It's a self seeding plant, so if you find a patch and let it go to seed, expect a patch again the next year. Chickweed is very high in minerals (calcium, magnesium, manganese, iron, zinc, phosphorus, potassium) and vitamins (A, Bs and folic acid, C) and increases the gut's ability to absorb nutrients in chickens and humans. It tends to dissolve fatty deposits and benign tumors and break down thickened mucus. After a long winter, chickens know exactly what they need, and they eat a lot of chickweed.

    Chickweed can be grown in your yard for your chickens to forage or grown under screened "boxes" in enclosed areas where they scratch and live. 

    Henbit (lamium amplexicaule) is often confused with purple dead nettle (lamium purpureum) and both are in the mint family. Dead nettle is very nutritious, but chickens don't seem to like it. Henbit has smaller leaves and flowers, and chickens love it. The leaves are opposite and the flowerhead is circular, like a little tiny cauliflower or cabbage head before fruiting. The flowers, themselves, are small pink-purple and stick straight out. Henbit has a lot of iron as well as vitamins A, C, and K.

GROWING & HARVESTING:

    Chickweed and henbit can be found or grown in the yard or garden beds during cooler spring or fall weather. This past winter, I added chickweed to my winter hoop tunnel which gave us thriving greens to feed the hens way ahead of its normal spring growth in the yard. 

    Harvest chickweed every 2-3 days for a continuous harvest of lush greens. Once seeds form, bushy growth stops. Run your fingers through the patch, palm down, and raise the tiny stems up between your fingers and trim a couple of inches off, as if you are giving it a "haircut". If the plant has spread sideways, you can also grab a handful of the flat-lying stems and cut off those tops also. Don't pull hard! Chickweed has very shallow roots and will come up with the lightest of tugs. If you do bring up a few whole plants, just cut off the roots at the base of the stems.

    Henbit can be harvested much the same way, but it doesn't grow as densely, so just snip or pop off the tops either before or during flowering to promote more tops to form. Many of the small pink flowers will drop off when dried but that's alright. 

FEEDING FRESH & DRY:

    Both of these can be fed to your chickens, rabbits, and ruminants (goats, sheep, cows) fresh while they are growing in the yard or field or dried for an additional vitamin and mineral support any time of the year. 

    This is especially helpful if you run out of feed or prefer to avoid processed feed. Store-bought minerals are also unnecessary if your animals are eating a balanced diet from nature which provides more bio-available and digestible forms of nourishment complete with living enzymes that enable living beings to utilize the nutrients within the little green packets of leaf and flower. 

    When winter's cold offers nothing green for my chickens, I will have a large feed bag full of dried greens ready. I will be adding other dried greens to this bag, such as dandelion and stinging nettle, but right now is the time to gather and dry chickweed and henbit.

BUYING SEEDS: Chickweed seeds can be found all over the internet and can be purchased through Mountain Rose Herbs and Strictly Medicinal Seeds. Henbit seeds are more difficult to find. Many people are selling dead nettle and calling them henbit. Beware! Make sure you are buying henbit/lamium amplexicaule and not dead nettle/lamium purpureum. You can harvest henbit seeds from plants you find growing in the yard or a field.

PROJECT: Chickweed (and other forage greens) feeding box

The box is easy and you can use scrap lumber or long, straight branches or trunks that have fallen or been pruned out. Just cut 4-6"(10-15cm) wide boards into 4 pieces and hammer them together to form a rectangle. Lay this on the ground where the forage bed will stay. (If you feel the screen tops will cave in from the weight of your birds, just add cross-pieces of lumber, branches, or even bricks or rocks.) 

Fill this with soil to within about 1/2"(12mm) of the top edge. Spread chickweed seeds across the soil and just lightly rake them in with your fingertips or palm of your hand. Water with a fine spray so as not to dislodge the seeds. If you feel this will dry out too quickly in the sun, you can add a light mulch dusting of chopped straw or grass clippings to retain some soil moisture. 

Lay 1"(2.5cm) hardware cloth over the top (if growing just chickweed or other low-lying plants), folding it carefully over the edges, trimming AND tucking in sharp points so your chickens don't get hurt. Staple this wire down securely.

NOTE: You can also seed the box with grass, barley, oats, buckwheat, or other forage grasses, but then the soil should be about 1"(2.5cm) below the top of the box and the wire top should be the 1/2"(12mm) kind.

Free and nutritious food for your chickens, rabbits, and other animals! Take a weed walk and see if you have chickweed or henbit growing in your yard or along the edges of fences and forest.