Can Chicken & Rabbit Feed Be Grown?

[GardenGnome]

I would like chickens and rabbits one day can you grow there food?

[rainbowgardener]

rabbits easily, because they like greens and carrots and stuff from your garden. You can feed them beet tops and carrot greens and broccoli leaves and other stuff you might not use.

Chickens eat grains, but also need protein. Free ranging chickens eat insects (and slugs) and whatever they come across, as well as being fed grains.

[Marlingardener]

Yes, you can grow enough chicken feed to sustain a small flock (6 or fewer). However, free-range hens only sustain themselves in spring, summer, and part of the fall. Wintertime you have to feed them, which means growing and drying grains and giving them some sort of protein.
We let our girls free-range when I'm outside with them (chickens are born to trouble and woe, and will find it fast when left on their own) but we also feed them daily with an organic, balanced feed.
I'd think you'd have to store and provide for rabbits during the winter, also.

[cynthia_h]

If you have snails, collect the snails in a bucket and scatter them in front of the chickens. That'll give 'em some protein intake! Esp. since snail populations are larger during the winter/rainy months in lower elevations.

What elevation are you at, and in what county? Sorry; I don't know.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

[GardenGnome]

Paradise ca 95969 I think we are 1000 we get some snow.
And I have no snails in my yard just slugs. Is that odd? In the 10 years I've lived here I've seen one empty snail shell. But I've seen chickens running around here and there.
Also is that a rooster that won't crow all the time if I wanted to mate the chickens?

[Marlingardener]

Roosters crow--at all hours of the day. If you want to raise chicks, you can purchase fertile eggs and put them under a hen that's gone broody (she wants to sit on eggs). You'd have to realize that some of the chicks will be roosters, and you'll have to get rid of them.

[GardenGnome]

Thanks for the tip I won't be getting chickens for awhile. I need to do a lot of yard work but maybe in the next 5 years but I think ill keep looking for info.