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Description: F. E. E. DING YOUR CHICKENS: BERRIES. REGARDING POULTRY – FEED YOUR CHICKS: BERRIES . Text and photos: Paul Cuypers, Belgium. I like to feed my Orpingtons…
Chickens And Hawthorn Berries
FEED YOUR CHICKENS: BERRIES ABOUT POULTRY – FEED YOUR CHICKENS: BERRIES Text and photos: Paul Cuypers, Belgium. I like to feed my Orpingtons herbs and vegetables, as well as berries and nuts. The more variety the better, so I’m always looking for something extra. During the second half of the year, especially berries and hips can be picked up for free everywhere. (Note: I use the term “berry” even though some are actually fruits/seeds). I feed them with rose hips and berries of rowan, hawthorn, elderberry, fire thorn, black thorn and sea buckthorn. In season – August to November – often 1 to 2 buckets per day, i.e. for 40 to 50 mature chickens. Rose hips, buckthorn and sea buckthorn are their favourites. Most of these berries contain carotene and lots of vitamins. Right: Hawthorn berries. In our area, people from a nature organization have planted a lot of berry trees and bushes in projects that were supposed to ensure that hedges and living fences would once again arise in natural environments for birds and other small animals. In early fall, these hedges bulge with chicken feed, such as the many hawthorns with thick reddish-brown berries. They are happily eaten by my Orpingtons and the leaves that come with picking are also eagerly eaten. There are also many Blackthorns. The berries are dark blue, about 1 cm thick, with a large stone inside. They are very bitter, but the chickens eat everything I give. Blackbuckberries in gin make a tasty alcoholic drink if you’ve picked too many for the chickens to eat. On the left: Blackthorn / sloeenberry. The small hard hips of eglantine and dog rose are the hardest to pick, but they are worth the effort because the birds really enjoy eating them. Because the meat is so tough that they don’t spoil, you can easily fill more than a week and give a handful every now and then. Below, right and left: The dog rose and the Rugosa rose. The rose hips of the Rugosa rose are softer and thicker, making them ideal for feeding. The chicks are completely dependent on the many small seeds that are inside, and when the last seed is gone, they also eat all the pulp. It’s also really good for us, it’s full of vitamin C. You can continue to feed rosehips straight from the bush well into winter, unless there are many wild birds in your garden as they will also eat it. Rowan berries are very easy to pick. They hang in bundles and there are no thorns in the way. If you know where to find some trees that aren’t too tall, you’ll have a bucket full of berries in 5 minutes.Right: European rowan tree full of berries. Elderberries are great too. They are black, very soft and contain lots of blue juice. Super healthy, although picking can be a pain. Therefore, I usually just break a twig and put it on the ground in the run, or tie them to the net. The chickens eat the berries from the twigs and also eat the leaves. Above: Twigs with sea buckthorn (yellow) and elderberries (black). By the way, I have noticed that my Orpingtons also like to eat the bark of the shelf. In my runs there are several quite old elders that have trunks more than 10cm thick and the hens chop it up to available height. The elderberries can give a little bluish black diarrhea, the same as the thrushes, but it won’t hurt. As with all nutritional supplements, it is better not to overdo it. A lot of variety in the things offered prevents these kinds of problems. Although they are not actually berries, the small fruits of the black cherry tree are also good for feeding the birds. In some places they multiply like weeds and chickens really like to eat the bitter mini cherries. There really should be a fire thorn or pyracantha in every breeder’s ornamental garden. You can prune it in all shapes and the berries are great. Of course, this is again a bush with evil thorns, so you have to be willing to take the trouble. They are quite hard and dry berries that are very suitable for freezing, just like blackthorn and rowan berries. Left: Blackthorn with berries. If I can find some, I also like to feed sea buckthorn berries. A few years ago I planted some sea buckthorn bushes, but they bear no berries. It turns out that there are male and female plants, and the ones I have seem to be all the same sex. In the meantime I have planted some new ones and I hope the problem is solved. I’ve been meaning to plant sea buckthorn for a long time, but I didn’t know where to buy them. I was able to experiment several times when I was allowed to harvest at a friend’s house. Especially in coastal areas, these berries are very common, and if you have the chance, you should definitely make an effort to feed them. is a perfect success. I weave most of the twigs into the mesh of the runners, and within a few days they are skilfully picked by the animals. I always put some in the freezer. Because of the thorns, it is easy to pick the berries from the branches, but this is also the case with fire thorn, hawthorn, blackthorn and rose hip. The most important thing is how the berries are when they are thawed, and this works perfectly with sea buckthorn; they look as if they were freshly picked. Hawthorn berries, for example, immediately turn brown when they thaw. One would expect that it would go well with sea buckthorn, because in nature the berries still remain good even after the frost. It is even the case that the birds can get drunk when they eat the orange, oval berries after a frost, because the starch due to the frost is partially converted to sugars, which are then converted into alcohol. The berries are in clusters close to the branches and twigs, and they taste extremely sour. They contain a wide range of phytochemical components that can have preventive or positive effects on your health, vitamins A, B1, B2 and E and especially a high content of vitamin C, much more than inorange. It’s always been said that chickens are able to synthesize vitamin C by themselves and therefore in the absence of vitamin C they might not be as sick people (you know, the men from Columbus on the long voyages who died of scurvy ). But if there is one important factor that is overlooked, that is that vitamin C can be useful in contracting various winter diseases, and for the hens it will be much easier and therefore more efficient to get it than to ‘make’ it.Right : Sea buckthorn twigs full of berries. Left: Sea buckthorn berries and leaves, ready to put in the fridge. In herbal shops, syrups based on berries are sold as dietary supplements, and a medicinal oil is extracted from the seeds. Finches, such as chaffinch, ignore the pulp and eat only the seeds, thrushes and starlings eat the entire berry. The fact that the berries are so acidic makes them more interesting to me, because it can’t hurt to create an acidic environment in the intestines of our chickens from time to time, on the contrary. In our hobby – and also in the homing pigeon hobby – the birds’ drinking water is often slightly acidified, primarily with apple cider vinegar. With a generous portion of sea buckthorn berries, you can achieve the same effect in a completely natural way and completely free. Sea buckthorn, fresh or preserved in the freezer, is perfect to feed in the middle of winter, in preparation for the breeding season and to give extra vitality during the show season. The leaves of sea buckthorn can also be fed, as they come automatically with the berries if you pick for the freezer, in a hurry. Just make sure you carefully remove all the thorns; also at the base of each shoot there is usually a thorn! When my own bushes bear fruit, I will have fresh berries on hand from August to January; I probably won’t pick them, but just cut a branch full of berries and let the chickens do all the work, easy. Having your own berries in the garden is always the easiest. Immediately at hand, fresh from the bush, little waste of time. Many of the aforementioned species need little pruning, so they don’t need a lot of space. And they also do well in the chicken coop, which provides some shade at the same time. Elderberry, for example, is ideal for serving as a shade plant. Elderberry tolerates everything. You can prune and saw as much as you want, so it’s always exactly the size you prefer, even when it’s 20 years old. In the spring, you can also feed the flowers or make yourself elderflower tea. The rose hips of all types of roses can be fed to the chickens, so a beautiful flower garden provides excellent food