chickens

[maude]

As a prospective free range chicken keeper,I have a large paddock,are there any common garden plants or herbage to be aware of that would be detrimental to this project.Many thanks,Maude

[Patf]

Good luck with your chickens. I may be wrong but chickens don't

actually eat many plants, but enjoy scratting the soil among newly

planted specimens and scattering them far and wide. They are searching

for bugs. Ours enjoy eating lettuce, or perhaps it's the ducks. They

all make a mess of your garden though - flowers and vegetables. Pat.

[The Riff-Raff Element]

Oddly, despite their rather dim appearance, chickens seem to be fairly

clued up about what they can and cannot eat, so I wouldn't worry too

much about their ingesting poisonous plants. My own approach has been

to go over a piece of land and remove anything obviously dangerous

(nightshade, for example, though to be honest I don't know for certain

that this is toxic to birds: the berries are there for something to

eat, after all) and then leave them to it.

As Pat says, they will eat any food crops given half a chance, though

where plants are well established their effect on pests is often worth

the short-term loss of foliage. Ducks I have found to be generally less

destructive.

[Patf]

Maude - you will find lots of useful info on poultry on this site 

http://www.practicalpoultry.co.uk     There is a

forum and I think you can access articles from the magazine. Pat.