Rich Joseph from Joseph Staudt Hops in Neosho stopped at CLUCK the Chicken Store last week to suggest that hops and chickens might make good company. Rich is vice president of the Wisconsin Hops Exchange, a cooperative that encourages small growers to get into the hops business.

We have considered growing hops for several years just because we like the smell of the plant and, of course, we like beer. But we never connected hops with chickens.

Rich suggested that hops vines might make excellent shade plants for chickens who live in sunny yards. Hops grows fast and has large leaves. The vines can be trained to follow a wire or trellis, so it is theoretically possible to create a hops arbor without much trouble.

We were concerned, however, that hops might not be good for chickens. In doing a little research, we found that hops is not only safe, but may even be healthful for chickens. GRIT Magazine a few years back reported on a 2008 USDA study that said, “A compound in hops called lupulone was found to be possible replacement for low levels of antibiotics as a way of controlling some pathogenic bacteria in chickens.”

We thought it was worth a try, so we now have young hops plants at the chicken store. We will give them a try this summer and see how well they thrive and whether the chickens get along with them. If you are interested in trying your own experiment, we have a small flat of hops plants for sale.

We always suspected that our chickens would like beer. We have been feeding them whole-grain barley as a treat and they love it! The German Reinheitsgebot of 1516, sometimes called the "German Beer Purity Law", decrees that beer must be made of only barley, hops and water, so we’re darn near there.