The Dilemma of Free Range Chickens
I recall a time before moving to the country, pulling up to a friend’s driveway and being greeted by a clucking meowing mixture of chickens, ducks, geese, cats and a couple dogs. It felt natural with a sort of simple idealism.
Free ranging animals…doing what they were designed to do.
However, since moving to rural land and having the opportunity to house our own chickens, I have changed my mind on this. I have suddenly become aware of the cost of offering unencumbered freedom to animals: from hunting down eggs, to finding dug up plants, to stepping in poop on our deck, and even cleaning chicken prints on our brand new outdoor furniture set.
Not surprisingly, we need a plan here. A plan to contain and direct the animal instincts so the chickens can enjoy a freedom that doesn’t destroy our homesteading efforts.
Enter the school of thought: Supervised Free Range Chickens.
According to Countrysidenetwork.com, this is a growing trend among those tending backyard chickens. Supervised free range chickens are confined to a secure run and coop, and their nutrition is supplemented with feed. Safer yet, is a chicken tractor design, which is a covered run on wheels. Safe from predators and safe for my garden.
Whatever we decide, I can be sure our birds will have a much better life than 99.9% of poultry raised in the U.S. As you may know, the term “free range” means quite a different thing as a USDA standard. When you buy free range chicken eggs from the store, those chickens may have only had a few minutes with the doors open or perhaps a little gravel to peck at outside!
According to USDA statistics, in 2010 only .05% of chickens were raised free-range. The rest were raised in confinement buildings to never see the light of day.
http://smithmeadows.com/farm/what-is-free-range-chicken/
Farmed chicken is cheap and easy. And often sad. I’m thankful that while we will likely have to contain our chickens, I know where my eggs are coming from.
If you have any ideas on healthy chicken confinement, I'd love to hear them. Always learning, @allforthegood
These are some good ideas. I've seen some really good designs for chicken tractors that I like. But I also wonder, depending on the layout of the homestead, if sometimes it's better to "cage the people" while still letting the livestock free range. Basically have the areas that people use fenced off from the animals and allow the animals to free range everywhere else. That's how my grandparents ran their farm. Cows, sheep, and chickens could roam just about anywhere on their farm, but did not have access to the porches, yards, gardens etc.. Of course there was still the dilemma of predators and finding eggs. Upvoted, Resteemed, and following. Thanks for the ideas!.....I am here to help preppers by upvoting and resteeming survival, preparedness, and sustainable living content. Don't forget to use the #preppers tag in your posts. If you are on facebook, you can also share your posts in this group so our members can help upvote and share your posts. https://www.facebook.com/groups/steemitpreppers
Great idea. Cage the people. I like that also since I have small children. Thank you for your Resteem. I will try to remember to put that preppers tag in.
We were letting the chickens everywhere. But then I got tired of my dog eating chicken crap. I was tired of stepping in it, and they were tearing up my irises! haha. Jerks. So, because we have 20 acres, we still free range, but we have fenced off a "back yard" area behind our house. Now they can go anywhere else. They COULD go over the fence if they wanted, but they don't very often. If one does, it is my "bestie" chicken and she shows up on the back deck lookin in the sliding glass door for me. haha.
Something I never thought about was all their CRAP. Haha. I, too, had that image of going to a country farm and meeting hens and other poultry having free range of everything. And, still that place looked nice. Nope, I don't know how they did it. TOO MUCH CRAP. Hahaha.
It really is a dilemma, huh? Deciding whether or not to confine them. I don't think I could do "supervised" time. They're not easy to herd. So they wouldn't go back in for me. But, if I had to go one way or another, I guess a tractor would be one of the best ways to go. But then you still run into the problem of the poop left in those places.
If I still lived in town, I would probably fence off a larger portion of the yard. Some sort of confinement. Or using a movable fence instead of a chicken tractor? (could possibly be cheaper).
Yes , the poop! I wouldn't think such little creatures could cause such issues in that Dept. I'm trying and experiment of shooing them off my deck whenever they get on. Do they learn like dogs? I don't know.
I have heard people having them learn like that! I went to hosing them with water before finally putting up a fence. Hahaha
Good idea. The problem with shooing them, is my dog gets a little too excited and then I'm watching out for another problem!
Oh yeah! My dog gets super excited over that too! Tho we have used him to help herd them a couple times successfully!! Haha
We use a pasture pen measuring 50' x 50' and moved every week. It's big enough for 90 birds and has a circus tent hawk deterrent. We've been using it for 10 years now very successfully. I'll be doing a post on it sometime in the next few months.
Nice solution! We don't have a lot of open ground so it might be difficult to do something like that. But, we actually got rid of all of our chickens and got about 50 Muscovy ducks. They have been better than the chickens as far as staying off our deck and house area goes. I look forward to seeing your post -- you seem like you have some great ideas!
Been there. We had over 700 chickens at one time and made the mistake of allowing them to free range, trying to close them up in the coops at night. More and more of them started staying outside of the coops and living in the highpoints of our home. We had at times layers of poop. About the time we got most of them penned up with large runs, a fire came through and killed most of our chickens. This post is kinda funny for those of us who have been through this. Following you now. Please follow me over @myhomesteaded.
Thank you, I just checked out your post. It's always a privilege to be invited to hear another's journey into the realm of homesteading .I look forward to reading more. Sad story about the chickens. What a loss!
Just listen to your heart and be nice with others.
@allforthegood
Is that anything like Free Willy? LOL
Funny, but yuckier.
You have my upvote, thanks for sharing good info!
Thank you, I appreciate it!
I thought the chicken poop was bad, then the ducks started hanging out on the front porch. WRECKED! So. Much. Poop. Oh my goodness no, don't ever do that people. It was a living nightmare! I fenced in their pond, built a little duck house out of pallets and called it a day. You've been warned Lol.
Wow. We have 3 ducks and they actually do pretty well at staying off our deck. They seem to be on the cautious side, so it's worked out well for us for them to be free.
We have 9. They watch me through the french doors Lol
Howdy, Chickens think they are help us with the landscaping😉Sometimes when they get into scratching under clumps of shrubbery I don't mind so much, other times (like near the garden plot) I do. I highly recommend the supervised freeranging and we added a enclosed run to the coop area for their enjoyment!🐓
Right. Me too! They seem to gravitate to the garden, when there so Much room to roam, even with mulch elsewhere. Thanks for your feedback :)
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