Laura Nunes

Does anyone feed nettles to their poultry?

Do you have to process it in anyway I.e. cook, blend, drying etc or are they immune to the stinging hairs?

Is there any reason I shouldn’t try it as a feed resource?

Thanks

Runner beans and courgettes here but entirely depends on where you are

Poisonous/ harmful plants that I know of:

Buttercups
Rhododendrons and azaleas
Hygdrangea
Foxglove
Bamboo
Jasmine
Horse chestnut
Lilac
Anemone
Eucalyptus
All alliums
All plants that grow from a bulb e.g. daffodil, crocus, tulip etc (although my GPs demolished a gladiolus bed once with no ill effect)
Deadly nightshade and henbane (also leaves of any other nightshade plant though the fruit of tomato and sweet peppers are fine)
Rhubarb
All citrus
Ferns
Horsetails
All spurges
Hemlock
Oleander
Milkweed
Lily of the valley
Yew
Cowslips
Toadflax
Euphorbia
Celandine
All bindweeds
Ivy
Privet
Elder
Holly
Bleeding heart plant
Nettles (can be fed dry but avoid fresh for obvious reasons)
Dock
Any fruit seeds which cyanide e.g. apple pips
Aconite
Poppy
Ragwort

Cautions:

Spinach, beet greens, sorrel, chard etc - they can eat them but limit intake due to oxalates
Apple - too much can cause lip blistering but they usually stop eating it before this occurs
Iceberg lettuce - very watery and can cause diarrhoea

Guinea Lynx used to have a comprehensive database but I can’t seem to locate it right now.

Broad beans do really well every year and give much earlier crops than spring sown seeds. The only downside is I have to start them in pots and then transplant otherwise the mice dig them up when there’s not much else to eat. Also a few select salad leaves - mizuna, Pak Choi, claytonia, lambs lettuce.

I tried drying duckweed and comfrey but hit upon similar problems..... lots of space required, needs to be completely dry or it goes mouldy and crumbles very easily.

I tried adding it into some wet food (excess courgette that I froze earlier in the year) but still a lot of wastage.

I’ve been thinking about whether it’s feasible to make some kind of suet/tallow based flock block incorporating dried greens along with other goodies?

Dandelion, creeping wood sorrel and lambs quarters. All prolifically self seed and provide an endless supply of animal forage or salad leaves without any effort from me.

Marestail andb bindweed are the bane of my life. If you don’t get every last little bit of root it feels like 200 more pop up!

Don’t think i’ve seen lingonberry or morello cherry on the lists yet.....sorry if they are there

We are in zone 8. Our Hazel trees flower in late February and we usually have ripe nuts by late September/early October.

I definitely second the ramps but they spread everywhere so make sure you really want them.

I can also recommend:

Elephant  garlic - it’s really a type of leek but you can use it like garlic. It’s perennial and the bees love the flower.
Bunching onion - perennial. I grow ‘ishikura’.

I was also going to suggest tree onion but googling the Egyptian onion you mentioned I think it might be the same thing.