What To Put In Your Chicken’s Native Pasture Blend

Here is a short blog on what we recommend to put in your native pasture mix for your chickens.

(Looking for pasture mixes for other animals, check them out here!)

Grasses

-              Little Bluestem

o   This species is the tallest grass we would use for your chickens. It is a cornerstone of native prairies, and will stay green even during the hottest parts of the summer.

-              Sideoats Grama

o   This is another of the most common prairie grasses. It’s a tad shorter than Little Bluestem, but it creates great habitat and forage areas for the chickens.

-              Sand Dropseed

o   This is a short grass that will be hardy enough for the chickens to walk all over.

-              Blue Grama     

o   This is another short grass that is hardy. It greens up a bit before the others, and will stay resilient with a lot of traffic.

-              Junegrass

o   This is a very short grass that greens up the earliest of all the mentioned grasses.

-              Rough Dropseed

o   This grass adds a lot of structure to the prairie with its wiry blades of grass. It stays green throughout the summer. It also stays short enough to see the chickens.

-              Indiangrass

o   This one can be good. It’s downside is that it can get 6 feet tall, but the seeds are highly palatable for the chickens. If you do add this to the mix, only add a little bit.

Wild Flowers

-              Purple Prairie Clover

o   This is a no brainer legume. The seeds are filled with protein, and it attracts lots of insects.

-              Whorled Milkweed

o   We only pick this one instead of common milkweed because it attracts all the same insects, but it doesn’t get as tall. It stays very short.

-              Maximilian’s Sunflower

o   This flower has nutrient packed seeds that have deworming effect on the chickens. Oh, and it brings in lots of insects.

-              Partridge Pea

o   This legume has incredible seeds for the chickens. It’s short. Easy to establish. Beautiful. And it brings in lots of pollinators.

-              Illinois Bundleflower

o   A great pollinator plant that brings in insects as well as provide nutrient dense seeds.

-              White Prairie Clover

o   Very similar to its cousin, purple prairie clover. But diversity is king when it comes to a healthy prairie.

-              White Sage

o   This one is an insect magnet. It’s less flashy, but it adds just as much to the ecosystem.

-              Black-Eyed Susan

o   This is one is beautiful, easy to establish, an insect attractor, and offers many seeds for the chickens.

-              Rough Blazing Star

o   This liatris is at the top of the beauty list. But most importantly, it attracts insects well into the fall, which adds to the “grazing” season for the chickens. It also adds lots of structure to the prairie.

-              New England Aster

o   Similar to Rough Blazing Star, this blooms late in the growing season and holds insects in the prairie for weeks after most of its neighbors.

-              Golden Alexander’s

o   Though this one looks like Wild Parsnip, it is a common prairie species. It’s big seeds offer lots of protein to the chickens, and it blooms very early which brings some of the first insects of the year into your prairie.

-              Cream Gentian

o   Though the seeds aren’t exciting to the chickens, this species attracts lots of insects, and it is very beautiful.

-              White Wild Indigo

o   These are some of the biggest, meatiest seeds a chicken can eat. It also adds lots of structure to the prairie, allowing the chickens places to roam.

-              Pale Purple Coneflower

o   Look… you have to have coneflower. It’s a prairie must

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Want to find out more? Check out our native mixes here, or reach out to us!