Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Have you kept free range poultry?

Yep. Mine love to spend at least part of their day in very thick undergrowth.

Mine could use some safety goggles. I can believe they work their way through the nasty thorny stuff down there. At least they are not busy pooping on the deck and porch when they are off exploring.

The French Rooster was the 20 Franc gold piece of France till WWI, when the world went off the classical gold standard.

I thought chickens lived in the grocery store. Are those boneless, skinless ones difficult to raise?


mike r

I free range my chickens. They keep fleas, ticks, snakes, under control, practically eliminate these bothersome invaders.
Work great. I do average a loss of about 2 to 5 chickens per year due to a family of foxes we have in the area,but it's manageable.

Yes.

I saw a pack of the guineas make what looked like serious effort to run down a half grown cottontail last week.

My lab came cruising through the yard with one of the neighbor's chickens who had roamed away. I thought, oh hell. Grabbed that chicken expecting it to bed dead and dogs soft mouth hadn't even bruised that thing. Wheew.

There's a half grown cottontail that fearlessly comes over and joins my flock whenever I toss them some scratch. He gets right there in amongst them and eats the scratch with them, along with the occasional leafy green. Seems to have so little fear of me, that he comes within a couple of feet. I almost feel at times like I could reach down and pick him up, but likely not. Sometimes the mother hen (with baby chicks in tow) will chase him off. She might not know he's not interested in snatching a baby chick.

Hi John,
Here is the technical assist for the "Poultry Place Photos"......

Rooster photo attached. Videos to come!

Dave

John,

Here are the follow up Poultry Place Actions Shots! Click on video links to enjoy!

Dave

Need better resolution files John, Let's get the high-res for tomorrow!

Thanks Dave. We have had 2 adolescent great horned owls hanging around. The brown leghorns are not known for being a "lap chicken" breed. They are pretty hyper and wary which makes them a good choice for free range though. They will hop up for over watch duty in the evenings though. Interesting critters.

The roosters will eventually get mean. They just do.

It's unlikely you'll get them to follow you. There's no reason for them to. I suppose if you kept working out by throwing scratch down they'd eventually get further and further down the trail. Especially if you only throw it when you're on the trail. Then they'll associate the trail with that feed.

Good luck, they're fun.

-Jake

One of my favorite Gary Larson cartoons.

We did the free range chicken and Guinee hen thing for a few years,
t-post and chicken wire is your friend on where you want them not to go.
The carpenter ant, spiders, and bug problem was taken care of in short order,

there comes a time when free range birds need to go in the freezer and sanity return to the yard.
If not freezer than just fence the chicken area in and throw grass clippings and dinner scraps over the fence.

Thanks Jake, right now they are new to us and we are just thinking tick protection and egg production. If/when the roosters start getting ugly with us I start looking at recipes.

Deleted - through some magic provided by this new laptop, this got into the wrong thread.

No, they escaped.