Greetings, Brenda!
I'll let the others keep answering about the feeding dog food thing as I've never even given thought to doing that so don't know much about it, except to ask why you'd want to spend so so much extra money on your chickens like than when you could get a nutritionally-perfect mix of grains & such made up by a local feed mill for them at WAY less cost. I have dogs - well, OK, one out of the two but that puts them both on the same chow - that reacts in skin allergies to most dog chows so are strictly on a lamb & rice chow (which has to be a "higher end" chow because it's so much more ingredient-specific) and know how much more the cost of that is compared to other dog chows
whether cheap or not brands. For the cost of one 40 lb bag of that, I can purchase 200 lbs of mill-custom-blended nutritionally perfect feed for my chickens. Think about that...
Not sure what the frozen honeybees thing in the subject line is all about, as there's nothing at all mentioned in the original post itself about bees.
However, my purpose in writing is to hopefully help you out more with your veggie gardening. You'd mentioned wanting to use a weed killer that sounded like a chemical poison type in your gardens to avoid pesky weeds. Would love to ask *why* you'd want to go that direction, but instead
would rather help you *not* use them......using them is as bad for both the earth & your environment and anyone eating the vegetables as they are for your chickens that you're concerned about, and that's truth.
An insanely simple way to keep a veggie garden weed free, crazy as this may sound, is by recycling brown cardboard - preferably with a minimal amount of printing on it as possible - to lay on the garden's already-prepared surface ground before planting. Cut holes in the cardboard where you want to place a plant or seeds - done deal, almost zero weeds or weeding the entire growing season. I say almost, because where there's earth exposed to the sun - the holes you cut for the veggie plants and possibly along the edges where your cardboard ends if you don't "edge" them off with anything -- things will grow. Pulling the 1 or 2 weeds from the plant's holes is a couple-minute per week breeze......only having to pull a few weeds from along the cardboard's ends should that happen - *nothing* compared to all the weeds that would need to be pulled without the cardboard there.
The cardboard is biodegradable (you probably won't find much if any of it left anymore by next year's planting season) - free if you find a store or restaraunt/banquet hall or whatever to get permission to raid their cardboard recycling dumpster of all larger boxes - and environmentally a *ton* safer than using chemical poisons......which, you'd have to repeat using several times a season at the additional $$ and earthly costs to each time.
I've been using this method very successfully for several years now, after having experimented with things like different kinds of mulches (which don't work near as well), landscaping fabrics (very high cost!! with it's deterioration so replacement factor *every* year), etc etc. Get most all my brown cardboard from a nearby wedding/banquet ballroom.
There are a few more very simple tricks to doing it - if it's something you do consider doing, go ahead & contact me offlist and I'll fill you in on them.
Kate in WI :-)
<< Posted by: "pennycandygirl"
Hi...new at chickens, haven't even gotten my chickens yet!! ...so I am
benefitting mucho, mucho from this site.
From what I've read thus far, chickens in the veggie garden might not be such a
great idea and I want to use a weed/seed killer in the veggie garden to avoid
those pesky weeds.
My question is, is it a good idea to feed the chickens dog food...the higher
end...to get the protein they miss from scratching in the garden.
I also wonder what kind of nutrition does a chicken get by being "trucked"
around the grassy yard? Do they scratch/find bugs in grass?
Thanks for your patience...!
Brenda-Utah >>
Hi...new at chickens, haven't even gotten my chickens yet!! ...so I am
benefitting mucho, mucho from this site.
From what I've read thus far, chickens in the veggie garden might not be such a
great idea and I want to use a weed/seed killer in the veggie garden to avoid
those pesky weeds.
My question is, is it a good idea to feed the chickens dog food...the higher
end...to get the protein they miss from scratching in the garden.
I also wonder what kind of nutrition does a chicken get by being "trucked"
around the grassy yard? Do they scratch/find bugs in grass?
Thanks for your patience...!
Brenda-Utah >>
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