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Interesting read.

How many closed flock generations do you have? It took three generations of what were already free range hatched Marans to adapt to Catalonia from France. The Bantams however caught on pretty fast and one rarely saw them wandering around in the open. The Marans did evenually learn by following...

I estimated an acre per tribe in Catalonia as a territory. A tribe could be a breeding pair plus offspring. There were no fences that would contain chickens so they have an entire National Park at their disposal. My usual range distance tallies with yours (I have to convert everything to metric)...

Completely agree. This is exactly what I'm advocating, variety, access to it, natural behaviour including foraging. Sitting and hatching etc etc.

The giant pink elephant in the room called reality. First I would like to apologise to @Aunt Angus for my part in the thread drift. There is no satisfactory answer to your question. I would always choose ranging with commercial feed as backup for any chickens I cared for provided I had chosen...

Yeah but, the evidence says they do survive in such environments. There isn't any debate to be had. All over Asia Africa and parts of the Med chickens live free range with no commercial feed. They may well be deficient in some chemicals but they still live and breed and lay eggs. For many the...

But, ranging chickens are likely to eat other things apart from plants. Even with the Ex Battery hens I now care for, vegitation is way down the list of feeding preference. They do eat some types of grass and a number of other plants. One would have to know the nutritional content of all the...

Well this is the thing isn't it; there is no right way. Different breeds and different keeping circumstances require different feeds and different approaches. What may be optimal in one set of circumstances may not be in another. There really doesn't seem to be much point worrying over much...

Now we have quality and optimal in the equation and of course the breed and age of chicken being fed. There are then a fairly wide range of commercial feeds that will keep a chicken alive (some will need supplements) and producing eggs.

No problem with any of that.

Okay, want to have a go at defining either with respect to this topic?

Okay. So we can agree that there is some latitude in these componants. How about Protein. There are feeds containing 12% to 28% that I've seen, Calcium from less than 1% tp 6% etc etc. All I'm trying to point out is there is a large variation in what gets described as balanced feeds. Some feeds...

I won't go through them all. 0.29% compared to 0.37% is a large difference. To make this clearer remove the zero and decimal point you get 29% and 37%. If ones pay packet increased by 8% most would consider this as a substantial pay rise.

I have a farming background.

Some posters have placed great importance on the idea of a balanced feed. Obviously the term balanced implies some ratio between componants that must be kept to ensure this balance. The main arguement in these debates is commercial feed will provide this balance while forage/treats may not. So...

I don't think this a fair arguement. There wouldn't be any chickens to argue about without human interference.:D You can't rule out adaptation, be that to an environment primarly human, or some other creature. There is interdependency between all the species.

I think this is the problem here. There is no ordinary backyard free ranging particularly when one includes how the rest of the world keep chickens. U_Stormcrows poll indicates as much for the keepers here on BYC. What there is is a proportion of people who never let their chickens out of their...

I gave the Ex Battery and rescues chopped sausage for supper. I'm lucky I've got any fingers left.:lol:

True, you have. Just checking.:p:D

That seems fair enough. But, in other countries with impoverished ecology (areas of Africa and Asia) chickens do survive. A couple of those reasons are the chicken keeping model they use and of course the breeds they keep.