Chickens eating cress

There is nothing like the lack of sunshine to make you appreciate the fact that sunshine is what we are really selling here at Broadview. Just before Christmas we got a 21″ snow, and then a spell of frigid weather that kept the ground covered for weeks. While we still let the chickens out to play during the day, we found that they do not like snow higher than their heads. The snow covered up all the grass for weeks, and the grass is the vector we use to get the sunshine into the chickens. I noticed that the egg yolks were starting to turn lighter yellow, like grocery store eggs. I started to look around for something green to feed the hens so I could get some sunshine back in those eggs. I found what I was looking for literally in my own back yard. The spring fed stream that flows out of my yard was full of succulent green watercress. A few minutes with a rake yielded a 5-gallon bucket full of sunshine in the form cress, grass and duckweed kept green and growing by the relative warmth of the spring water. I spread the fresh green salad over the snow and the chickens went after it like crazy.

They ate it all, leaves, stem and roots in just a few hours. Over the remainder of the cold snap we took several buckets of sunshine to the chickens until the snow melted and the chickens could once again forage for their greens themselves. They are calling for snow this weekend, and we will do our best to keep that solar energy flowing even if it means redefining the term “Chicken salad”.