Will chickens eat or damage these plants?

[fiddleblue]

I am planning how to lay out my chicken run and also thinking about eventually letting the chickens range free in the yard at times. Will they eat or damage any of the following types of plants: ficus, ferns of different varieties, succulents or cacti of different varieties.

 

[Uppity Peon]

In my experience they will destroy just about any plants.
I might be concerned about ferns because some types are toxic.

 

[flymamma]

My chickens will eat every plant in my yard ... EXCEPT mint . I do not have any firns or succulents, so I do not know . But they are not smart enough to know that they should not eat something ... so research into your plants is a good thing .

 

[RainbowFlower]

I just let my chickens spend 3 weeks in my vegie garden. It is fenced off, and had grown a lot of weeds over winter (I'm in Australia). There are a few perennials in there, but not many. I found they loved the mint. They dug around the chives, but pretty much left them alone. They also left the lemon thyme alone, and picked at the oregano but didn't dig it up. They also weren't interested in the raspberry plants - they dug around them and ate the weeds in between them, but not the plants.

Everything else they either dug up or ate - there were some pea plants, and a few celery stalks left and lots and lots of weeds.

Basically they had a fabulous time digging and fossicking about. They were so excited to be let out of their house each morning. Now my garden is well dug, well fertilised and ready for planting this week.

 

[juliecox]

So far they've left the basil and the sage alone, but the thyme has gotten pecked! They seem to like eating the leaves off my tomatoes too. >.< The ginger they leave alone too. I fence off anything I don't want them tearing up!

 

[chickiedoodle]

Mine ate all my cactus. They eat anything and everything as far as I can tell. Except a few herbs and the wild grape. They eat my cultivated grape, but none of the wild grape

 

[fldiver97]

Well, mine have the run of the yard....they have left all the ferns (all WI native species) alone, Have not done (much if any) damage to my tall prairieplants but have gone wild in one variety of mint, violets, peas and chamomille. Not much left of those. Not interested in thyme or wild onion so far. They have also trampled some of my spiderwort into oblivion (at least for this season, they will probably come back next spring), trampled some Mayapples and some of my native sedges looks like they tried to make nest out of them.... They have also discovered large patches of my wild strawberries and barren strawberries. Needless to say not a sinle berry was left after the troops went thru! They have decimated part of the barren strawberry patch by the shed, the rest is thriving. They have done a great job with the weeds though.....except dandelions, they havent' touched those I am planning on restricting access to some areas in the spring until the palnts are not so small anymore and then I will let them have the entire yard back. No more veggies in the back though.....

 

[Eggs4Sale]

Decimated my succulents, including spiny agave. I have a small cactus in a pot and they've left it alone. Some plants, they don't eat, but they scratch right out of the ground as they dig for what-nots.

 

[cmom]

My birds scratched and tore up my gardens and my compost piles. I had just planted some new plants and before I knew it they were destroying them. It was either fence in the gardens or the chickens. The chickens lost but they have a nice fenced in yard now.

 

[SallyF]

Mine free range for about half the day. I had to fence off the cabbage in my garden; talk about chicken treats! They ate an entire row of kale, but didn't seen to care for the squash (until the squash bugs attacked), lettuce, salad burnet or the okra. Didn't bother any of my herbs (parsley, oregano, catnip, hyssop, or chives). They did eat all the figs off of a small fig tree with low branches, but who wouldn't?

And to top it off, we have a golden lab who LOVES carrots (will dig them out of the ground), tomatoes, corn and beans. Next year I may plant a garden just for the critters. We live in the middle of a forest; haven't been bothered by deer, squirrel or rabbits. Many there was just nothing left for them!