I Planted a Food Forest for My Chickens (No More Feed Store!)

What if your chickens could feed themselves without destroying your garden and without a single trip to the feed store? This spring I turned a bare patch of dirt into a living food forest for my flock and today they're exploring it for the very first time. It started with scraps, leftover fencing, a few t-posts, and a stubborn dream to grow more of my chickens feed instead of buying bags of it at the store. Last year I built a simple chicken tunnel, just enough to guide them along the edges of our garden where they could clean up bugs and weeds without wrecking my crops. But this year I wanted to do more, so I expanded the tunnel to a new section, one that used to be just compacted dirt and weeds. I planted cover crops like crimson clover, nothing fancy, just fast growing greens that would fix the soil and feed my birds at the same time. And then I waited. I kept the chickens out, which wasn't easy, but I needed the plants to get big enough to hold up to their scratching feet. And today was the big day. I opened the gate and let them in. They were cautious at first, curious, stepping slow, but then the pecking began, the scratching, the foraging, it worked. They're doing what chickens were made to do, naturally, and I'm one step closer to a flock that feeds itself while improving the garden around it. Right next to the tunnel, we've been growing a garden with our chickens in mind. In fact, it's the chicken's garden. We planted corn to create shade and structure, and in just a few weeks, we'll be tucking in pole beans to climb those stalks, squash to sprawl out below, stacking food for us and our birds. This chicken garden area is growing better than I hoped so far, especially with all the rain we've got recently. And soon this little patch will be another step towards full chicken feed independence. I created a food forest for my chickens in this chicken tunnel area, and today is the first day they've actually ventured out in here. There's so much stuff in here that I can't even see them, but they're in there. Awesome. I know I needed to get these guys in here because it became so overgrown with the clover that I planted months ago. I did a video on that when I was planting all of this. Wish I could get a better video of you guys. I can hear you, but I can't see you. You see what I got in here? There's some mulberries. There's mulberry trees above. Actually cut some down because they were shading the garden, but they're full of mulberries already, which is awesome. So these are all going to fall onto the ground and be a tasty snack for all the birds. And they're already, look at them. These are my almost free range chickens in here. I wanted to wait until I started to see some flowers on these crimson clover, but it was getting so overgrown, I just knew I needed the chickens in here. So what I did was I actually brought in some of my older hens that I had over on the farm in chicken tractors because I know that they remember the chicken tunnel. I had it closed off to the chicks because they were so small, I felt like they would be able to escape out of some of the gaps in the fencing and stuff like that. But now they're big enough to come out here, but they were too afraid to come out into this overgrown area. But the older hens have led the way and it worked. The young chickens came out into this tunnel and now they're exploring. I wish you could see, you could hear them in here. You can hear, but it's hard to see them. It won't be long until all this stuff is cleaned up. I'm sure they're going to enjoy all these fresh mulberries. Hello there. Good job girl. I do love hearing the sound of the chickens in these tunnels and they're so overgrown that you can't even see the chickens in there, but I can just hear them and see them working through all of these weeds and clover and other things that are growing in there. I'm so happy about that. But I don't think that they have made it all the way out here. See, the tunnel used to end about right here and I extended their chicken tunnel to travel this way. It goes here all the way behind our front garden plot here and they haven't made it out this way yet, but back here there's even more treats for them. There's tons of black raspberries coming up. I have a mulberry tree that just came up too, so those just sprout up like weeds, the mulberries. But this entire garden area is surrounded by fruit on the edges and all of that's going to drop for the chickens in this tunnel area that, man, it's so overgrown you can't even see, but I think it's a good thing. It's going to be good for the chickens because most of the time they spend it in their static run and now they have all this overgrown stuff to work on eating and breaking down for me. My only concern really is that when it gets really dark later tonight that they can find their way back to their run, but hopefully they will do a good job of mowing down everything that's already there so they can at least see the path to get back, but they're pretty smart animals. I'm sure that they will figure it out. Anything good in there? Oh, they look so happy in here. There's so much green stuff for them to eat, a mixture of the clover and the weeds, the berries. Oh, this is amazing. I think I can hear the happiness in their chirps. Can you hear that at home? They're such happy birds. They're safe in the tunnels. Nothing's going to hurt them in here, huh? Well, I'm definitely not going to be hurting the garden. They're trapped in the tunnel. If these guys were to get out of that tunnel right now, they would destroy this whole garden that's for them. These are all the chicken garden right now. We've got sunflower rows, 10 rows of sweet corn, and more rows of sunflowers over there. We don't want these guys breaking out, so I am keeping an eye to make sure that there's no openings or anything funny that's happened since I've built this structure. Looks good so far. I will think that it will take them quite a few days to make it all the way through this thick stand of weeds to get to the new area behind the garden, but they'll get there eventually. It probably won't take them too long. There's 12 two-month-old baby chicks, and my two older hens. Not that old. They're only a little over a year old in here guiding the way, so I'm glad I made this part a little bit wider than before. It seems like they have more room to move from side to side, and that's good. Another reason I'm really excited about this tunnel system is because we've been seeing a lot of ticks lately. I've pulled one off me the other day. We pulled some off our son, and the more chickens we have around the edges of our property, the less ticks we're going to have, because they will eat those suckers, and I hate ticks. Those things are like little vampire demons that I just can't stand those things. They're so disgusting. I don't want them sucking my blood. Chickens are going to eat all those bugs that we don't want, and we're making them a lot happier in the process. We're making it a little bit further down here. We've got to this lamb's quarter here, another good weed for them. This is actually supposedly more nutritious than spinach, and supposedly tastes good too. I haven't actually eaten it. Well, I might have taken a bite or two before just to try it, but good food for the chickens, and you can hear them and see them munching on it down there maybe. They're going to mow all this stuff down before we know it. You know, it just made sense to put a tunnel along the edge here of the property because it wasn't really used for much, other than a tree line. You know, we have lots of trees, and when we first moved in, I didn't know that we had mulberries. Another thing we have that grows wild are black raspberries. That's that cane right there. Black raspberry. There's more mulberry there. Hasn't ripened yet, about to ripen. So cool that all that food is just resting here, and all that food is going to drop for all these birds to eat, and in turn, they're going to give us some more eggs. It looks like the ones that are still out are making their way back. Oh, that's good. Go ahead, guys. Smart birds. That's it. Go ahead. They know the way back from here. If you are interested in the idea of a chicken garden and feeding your chickens year-round from your backyard in a very small space, you're going to want to sign up for our email newsletter, because that'll put you on the waiting list for my course, The Self-Sufficient Chicken, that's going to be released later this year, and it's going to detail step-by-step guide on how you can grow enough food to feed your chickens for the entire year, and raise your chickens from home without even having to go to Tractor Supply or the feed store ever again. If that interests you, sign up down below for our email newsletter. That's going to wrap up this video. Thank you all for watching. We'll see you in the next one.