Time to move!

Today,. my chickens are 1 month old, and weigh more than a pound by my estimation.  They've been enjoying the protection of the shed for that long, and have been allowed outside for almost two weeks, but on the same patch of ground, which they have quickly purged of pretty much all the stuff they like to eat.  There is a bit of grass left, but they don't seem to interested in that.

I have been collecting a lot of extra weeds from my garden, some of them quite bit although I don't know what kind of weeds they are.  My daughter and I have been tossing these over the electric fence for a few days now, and the chickens DEVOUR these!  I've made a few notes about what they like to eat for plants.

 - They love broadleaf plants like dandelion.  I've got plenty of that to go around!
 - They will only eat what they can reach
 - They don't eat the stems and roots
 - They will eat thistle, if it's lying on the ground!  They picked clean about 5 large Canada Thistles yesterday, cautiously but they did eat it.
 - Grass that has a seed head does not seem to be that interesting.  I wonder if they would eat the seed head if they could reach it (ie, cut down)
I will be moving them to a new spot close by, with a huge number of broadleaf weeds and plants.  I have a second fence that I will be joining to the first, to give them more room.

A couple days ago, my wife called me, worriedly telling me that a whole bunch of them had gotten out of the shed when the door was accidently open.  I came home and found about 50 of them ranging all over the yard!  I kept an eye on it, and we kept the cats inside, just in case, but by nightfall, all of them were back inside the shed on their own.  Unfortunately, some of them are still able to slip through the fence netting, but they always go back.
There have been no deaths (that I know about) in 2 weeks.  If one or two have been grabbed by a hawk or something, I won't know until I take them to market, there isn't any effective way to count them all.  If some are gone, there's not much I can do, but I very much doubt that more than one or two will be eaten by flying predators.  There are a few hawks and owls in the area, but they stay well away from houses, and there is plenty of easier prey, like mice and gophers to eat.  I've also seen a few rabbits in the area, but nothing near us.

You can see how bit they are getting, the one at the bottom of this picture is a particularly big guy.

Here is a picture of the chickens eating the weeds, and you can see that they love the fresh green leaves.  I don't know how many calories or protein is in these plants, but there are plenty of minerals and other goodies, so my birds should be quite healthy!  They are eating quite a bit of regular feed, so I know that they aren't foraging for everything, but every little bit helps.