Chickens' favorite pasture foods

After two weeks on their first spring pasture, we rotated our flock onto a new area. Their old pasture was still quite well vegetated, but after a week I started to notice the chickens eating grass, which I figure means they ran out of the good stuff.  Time for my favorite part of chicken pasturing --- watching to see what the flock flocks to on new ground!

Chickweed remained a favorite, but two new plants made an appearance on the top of our chicken taste test list --- red clover and fleabane.  I've read that some people plant white clover in their chicken pastures, but our chickens had a choice between red and white clover and demolished the red while ignoring the white, so I think I'll change my clover planting plans.  Our rooster was especially interested in a young fleabane rosette and in picking violet flowers --- he thinks everything might be food, though, so I'd take those preferences with a grain of salt.  The ladies followed his lead to pick at the fleabane, but didn't seem nearly as interested in the weed as they were in that red clover.

I've noticed in both pastures that spots which had been home to the annual (and invasive) Japanese stiltgrass and thus had a grassy mulch with no living plants make good scratching spots to hunt for invertebrates.  I'm not suggesting that anyone plant Japanese stiltgrass in their pasture, but I think we can mimic this effect by letting the chickens degrade a pasture to the point where there are some bare patches before moving them on.  Of course, accumulations of leaves at the edge of the pasture were also quickly scratched over.

I plan to keep the chickens in this new pasture about two weeks, just like I did on the last pasture, and then hopefully rotate them to a third pasture if we've got it fenced in time.  This second pasture is in a shadier spot and has more weeds than grass, which looks less lush to the human eye but I suspect will be tastier to the chicken beak.  I probably should consider cutting back our ladies' rations to compensate for all of the forage they're currently getting --- our hens are starting to look fat and their crops are always bulging full.