🐣 Start Here: Can You Grow Chicken Feed at Home?
Absolutely. While most backyard chicken keepers continue feeding a balanced commercial ration, growing even a small amount of your own supplemental feed can reduce costs, provide seasonal variety, and give your flock healthy opportunities to forage naturally.
You don't need a large farm to make a difference. A few sunflowers along a fence, a raised bed of kale, a patch of white clover, or several pumpkin vines can provide fresh greens, nutritious seeds, enrichment, and seasonal treats that your chickens will eagerly enjoy.
Many homesteaders eventually expand beyond a few supplemental crops by adding grains, legumes, perennial plants, and storage crops that help provide homegrown feed throughout much of the year. Every garden is different, and the best feed crop plan depends on your climate, available space, growing experience, and long-term goals.
Whether your goal is lowering feed costs, improving flock enrichment, increasing self-sufficiency, or simply enjoying another part of the homesteading lifestyle, this guide will help you discover which feed crops are worth growing and how to choose the right ones for your backyard.
🌱 What Kind of Feed Garden Do You Want to Build?
There isn't one "best" crop for every backyard flock. The right choice depends on what you hope to accomplish. Some chicken keepers simply want to grow a few fresh treats and greens, while others hope to produce grains, protein crops, or long-term perennial forage that can reduce feed costs over time.
Most successful feed gardens combine several different crop types rather than relying on a single plant. Think about your primary goal, then explore the crops that best fit your needs.
🌾 Grow Grain
Interested in producing energy-rich grains that can be harvested, dried, and stored? Explore crops like Barley, Wheat, Oats, Grain Sorghum, and Proso Millet.
🫘 Increase Protein
Legumes and high-protein crops can provide valuable supplemental nutrition. Consider Cowpeas, Field Peas, Soybeans, and Amaranth.
🥬 Grow Fresh Forage
Fresh greens and forage encourage natural foraging behavior while providing seasonal variety. Good choices include Kale & Collards, White Clover, Alfalfa, and Comfrey.
🎃 Produce Winter Feed
Storage crops can continue providing value long after the growing season ends. Consider Pumpkins & Winter Squash, Sunflowers, Field Corn, and Grain Sorghum.
🌳 Plant for the Future
Perennial crops reward patience by producing for years after establishment. Mulberry, White Clover, Alfalfa, and Comfrey can provide recurring harvests.
🧭 Not Sure?
If you're unsure which crops best fit your climate, available space, and goals, our Feed Crop Planner can compare every crop in our database and recommend the best options for your homestead.
🧭 Find the Best Feed Crops for Your Backyard
Every backyard is different. The best crop for your chickens depends on your climate, available space, soil, sunlight, water, harvest goals, storage plans, and how much work you're willing to do. Instead of guessing, let the Backyard Chicken Planner compare all of our research-backed feed crops and recommend the ones that best fit your situation.
🌾 Why More Backyard Chicken Keepers Are Growing Feed Crops
Growing feed crops isn't about eliminating commercial chicken feed overnight. Instead, it's about making your flock healthier, your homestead more productive, and your feed budget a little more manageable each season.
Even modest gardens can provide fresh greens, seasonal treats, enrichment, and supplemental feed that encourage natural scratching and foraging while reducing waste and making better use of your available space.
💰 Lower Feed Costs
Harvest grains, pumpkins, greens, and other crops that can supplement purchased feed throughout the year.
🐔 More Variety and Enrichment
Fresh forage and homegrown supplemental foods encourage natural pecking, scratching, and foraging while adding seasonal variety to the flock's routine.
🌎 Greater Self-Sufficiency
Producing even part of your flock's supplemental feed helps reduce dependence on purchased products and makes better use of your property.
♻️ Better Garden Efficiency
Many feed crops also improve soil, attract pollinators, produce compost material, or provide multiple harvests throughout the growing season.
🧺 Seasonal Food Storage
Many grains, seeds, pumpkins, and winter squash can be stored for weeks or even months, extending your harvest well beyond the growing season.
😊 More Enjoyable Chicken Keeping
Few things are more rewarding than watching your flock enjoy crops that you planted, harvested, and grew yourself.
🪴 Start Small and Build Over Time
A productive feed garden does not have to begin as a large project. Many chicken keepers start with only two or three crops that fit their available space and experience.
For example, a beginner might plant sunflowers for seeds and enrichment, kale for repeated fresh harvests, and pumpkins for fall feeding and storage. After learning what grows well, the garden can gradually expand to include grains, legumes, forage crops, or perennials.
The goal is not to grow everything at once. It is to build a practical system that becomes more useful, productive, and manageable each season.
⚠️ Supplemental Crops Do Not Replace Balanced Feed
Homegrown crops should normally be used as supplements—not as a complete poultry ration.
Laying hens require a carefully balanced combination of energy, protein, amino acids, calcium, phosphorus, vitamins, minerals, and other nutrients. Feeding too much grain, fruit, vegetables, or forage can dilute the nutrition supplied by complete chicken feed.
Never feed moldy, spoiled, fermented, chemically contaminated, or improperly stored crops. Some seeds and plants also require special preparation before they are suitable for poultry.
🌾 Main Types of Chicken Feed Crops
Energy Crops
Corn, sorghum, millet, and sunflower seeds can provide concentrated carbohydrate or fat energy.
Protein-Oriented Crops
Cowpeas, alfalfa, clover, and some oilseeds can contribute protein, but they do not provide a complete amino-acid balance by themselves.
Leafy Forage
Kale, collards, clover, alfalfa, and mulberry leaves can provide fresh greens and foraging enrichment.
Storage Crops
Dried grains, seeds, pumpkins, and winter squash may remain usable after the main growing season.
Repeated-Harvest Crops
Leafy greens, forage plants, and some perennial crops can be harvested more than once.
Perennial Crops
Mulberry, clover, and alfalfa can provide recurring value without being replanted every year.
⭐ Explore the Feed Crop Database
Search the current collection or filter crops by growing season. Select “View Crop Summary” to see key uses, preparation notes, and safety information.
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🌻 Good First Crops for Beginners
The easiest choice depends on climate and garden space, but these crops are practical starting points for many first-time growers:
| Goal | Crop to Consider | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Easy seed crop | Sunflowers | Direct-sown, recognizable, and useful for enrichment and stored seeds. |
| Hot-weather protein-oriented crop | Cowpeas | Heat tolerant, drought tolerant after establishment, and able to produce leaves, pods, and mature seeds. |
| Cool-season greens | Kale and Collards | Can provide repeated leaf harvests during spring, fall, and mild winters. |
| Fall enrichment and storage | Pumpkins and Winter Squash | Produce large fruits that can be split open for pecking and enrichment. |
| Hot, dry climate grain | Grain Sorghum | Generally handles heat and limited moisture better than field corn. |
| Long-term perennial value | Mulberry | Can provide fruit, leaves, shade, and recurring seasonal enrichment after establishment. |
📐 Think About Space Before Planting
Not every feed crop is suited to every backyard. Pumpkins and winter squash may produce substantial fresh weight but require a large vine area. Corn needs a block of plants for dependable pollination. Clover, alfalfa, and millet are better planned by seeding rate than by counting individual plants.
A small garden may benefit more from repeated-harvest greens, cowpeas, or a few sunflowers than from trying to produce a large amount of grain.
🧰 Helpful Chicken Planning Tools
🔬 How This Guide Is Being Built
The Backyard Chicken Planner feed crop database is being developed from agricultural Extension publications, university research, government resources, established animal-feed databases, and poultry-nutrition references.
Values that cannot be verified responsibly are left incomplete rather than guessed. Crop recommendations will continue to improve as additional yield, climate, nutrition, and backyard-production evidence becomes available.
🚧 Feed Crop Tools Coming Next
This guide is the foundation for several future Backyard Chicken Planner tools:
- Individual chicken feed crop growing guides
- Side-by-side crop comparison
- Best crops by climate and growing region
- Best crops for small spaces
- Feed garden planting recommendations
- Seasonal planting and harvest calendars
- Estimated garden space and crop-combination planning