
Feed Your Flock with These Top 10 Heirlooms!
By Michelle Johnson
Choosy Chickens Choose Heirlooms!
OK, well, maybe chickens aren’t picky eaters, but doting poultry parents know the value of supplementing their birds’ diets with fruits, veggies, and herbs from the garden. Saving money on chicken feed is just one benefit. Garden-fresh treats provide essential nutrients, and you will be rewarded with contented chickens and eggs with rich, golden yolks!
With the help of some Baker Creek staff members and Facebook followers who tend chickens, here’s our list of 10 great heirlooms to grow with your flock in mind.
What to Grow to Feed Your Chickens:
When it comes to watermelon, it seems chickens don’t differ all that much from humans. Lots of folks listed watermelon as their birds’ favorite treat. NaShea Ridgeway, Baker Creek’s customer care manager, quarters and freezes melons for her birds as a summertime cooler. While we carry many stellar varieties, we recommend the beautiful Royal Golden watermelon. Its rind turns brilliant golden yellow when ripe, making it a snap to harvest at its peak. The pale red flesh is sweet, refreshing, and so good!
Cukes are also a popular garden treat for chickens. Go with the ever-reliable Boston Pickling cucumber. Prolific, flavorful, and delightfully crisp, it is a classic variety for pickling, as the name suggests. (The prodigious vines should produce enough fruit for family and fowl alike!)
You can’t go wrong with Luxury Pie pumpkin, which was introduced in 1893 by Johnson & Stokes. The lovely 6-pound fruit is perfect for pies, and your chickens will love it too!
Customer Michelle Lancaster recommends Black Beauty zucchini. This classic dark-green summer squash was introduced to U.S. markets in the 1920s and it paved the way for modern zucchini of this type. It is best picked young (but we bet the chickens don’t mind much if you don’t).
Customer Kenny Dillingham says his birds love Serpente de Sicilia, an edible Italian gourd also known as Cucuzza. The light green fruit is long and slender, and many people prefer it to zucchini. Bonus: The plants aren’t bothered by many pests and tend to be very easy to grow.
Serpente de Sicilia, or Cucuzza gourds
Greens:
Chickens also go bonkers for greens. Customer Laura Howard says her birds “absolutely love” Italiko Rosso dandelion, which, despite its name, is a member of the chicory family. Mizuna varieties, such as Early mizuna or Japanese Pink, will also make you very popular around the coop. Consider growing big forage varieties such as Walking Stick kale, which grows to gargantuan size. Miner’s lettuce is a great cold-tolerant green, perfect for times when many other greens would struggle to grow.
Customer Rochael Roulo’s chickens dig Cherokee Purple tomatoes, and so do we! It is a classic heirloom with deep, dusky color, superb sweetness, and jumbo fruit! Cherokee Purple is one of our best-sellers, and it is easy to see why! Remember: Chickens should only eat the ripe fruit of tomatoes, not the plants or leaves.
Corn:
Show your flock how much you care with a bouquet of Glass Gem flint corn! Customer Stanley Jensen says his chickens love the artful multicolor cobs, reminiscent of stained glass. Bred by the late Carl Barnes, a legendary corn collector and breeder from Oklahoma.
Sunflower heads provide hours of entertainment for the birds. Mammoth Grey Striped, with its delicious seeds and large size – averaging about a foot across – is an all-you-can-eat treat and the gold standard for jumbo sunflowers.
The Giant White Superschmelz kohlrabi can weigh up to 20 pounds! More than enough to share with your flock, and they'll love you for it.
Superschmelz, or Great White, Kohlrabi
What Else Can You Feed Your Chickens?
That was our top ten, but there's so much more you can grow to feed your flock! Home-grown grains, such as amaranth, are always a welcome addition to the chickens’ dinner. And growing perennial herbs around your chickens’ hangout – things like lavender, mint, and oregano – will make them happy, too!