Will chickens eat leaves?

[Roosterboy]

We have a pine and a maple tree in the backyard. Will the chickens eat some of the leaves because this is a huge task and we may just leave it as is(no pun intended) We also have an ornamental plum tree. Are these all safe?

 

[BaronRenfrew]

those trees will not be eaten by your birds.

there is a small number of plants poisonous to birds, search this site, someone wrote extensively about it before

 

[debilorrah]

Gosh my birds look at fallen leaves as free treats.

 

[Roosterboy]

I mean the leaves that fall off.

 

[d.k]

* Depends on the leaves. My girls have a lot of ficus in their pen which are great for finding bugs in, but they don't eat them. However, they do pull leaves off the bouganvillia and eat those.

 

[derby]

They will scratch them apart and scatter them around, but not really eat them.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

I've never seen our chickens eat the sugar maple leaves, but our sheep loved them! We have a couple of plum trees out back. I've never seen the chickens bother with those, either. What they do LOVE to do, is scratch around in leaf litter, looking for any bugs hiding under the leaves. This is their most favorite thing to do, especially along the fence lines that have old leaf litter at the base. The older leaf litter has the best odds of having a bug hiding under it!

 

[All about the EGG]

Ours love Hostas.

 

[WoodlandWoman]

The only thing that saved the hosta this year, is that they discovered the chard crop! They are so bad!

 

[menageriemama]

Quote:
Mine LOVE to scratch thru the leaves looking for bugs. We have all sorts of trees and I have never seen them eat fallen leaves though...