We weed the garden of plants that grow but we cannot eat, however the chickens find these "weeds" very tasty. If the chickens were to find these things in their space they would peck and pluck these plants right down to where the roots hold them to the ground. When we toss the weeds on the ground the chickens try their best to eat them but since they are not fastened to the ground, there is a lot of weed tossing and throwing as the chickens try to get a decent bite.
Weighting down the root ends with an old post block helps the chickens strip the weeds down to the stem. That was all that I was going to post about, but, today we had a little surprise. . . 
Swimmer and her Little Swimmer
(still wet with seaweed broth)
Our black star hen named "Swimmer", (because Jin saved her from drowning in the pond) showed up with two baby chicks. We were getting ready to leave for town and among the regular squawks and screeching, I heard a familiar peeping noise and turned to find Swimmer over by a bowl of seaweed broth. The peeping was coming from her little swimmer who had just fallen in to the bowl of broth. I rescued the chick, so now Jin and I have each saved a generation of swimmers.
What a sweet story! That's so cool that she hatched herself two chicks. When we had chickens when I was a kid our hens rarely went broody and in the whole time they hatched exactly one chick on their own who turned out to be a giant rooster my dad named Eggbert. He was gorgeous!
ReplyDeleteWe're not allowed to have roosters here in town. It's kind of too bad, I do love the sound of crowing.
Just found your blog and am searching wildly. I use my food processor to mill many weeds for food and then they just gobble it all up. Also for kitchen scraps they will normally leave it works very well and nothings wasted.
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