Anyone *not* free range?

[offgridhermit]

I can't free range. Mainly because there's nothing for them to eat because I have desert sand for a yard. Another reason is predators. I'm thinking of expanding when money allows. I wish I could find other people on BYC that live at high elevations, off the grid, in the middle of nowhere, with nothing but sand as their soil.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

In reality not one back yard chicken fancier in a 1,000 even comes close to a true free range flock. By the same token not one so called free range commercial flock in 10,000 is even that close.

To be free range in my book means that there are no walls, fences, roofs, barriers, or anything else between your birds and nature and that every dip of water they take on is cool free flowing spring water and that the roof of their coop is the Moon and stars.

 

[chickengeorgeto]

I wish I could free range but I live so close to the woods...

In my younger days I had true free range hens and young chickens right out in the middle of the woods. The secret is that you must be more watchful than the varmints out to kill your birds and beat the bleeping vermin at their own game. If that means digging up a fox den and whacking the pups on the head with a shovel, well that's life.

Of course I had the cooperation of every school boy who constantly was on the lookout for fox and raccoon pelts to sell and I had the help of every farm wife in the county who could seemingly shoot a hawk further away than she could see him in order to protect her own chickens. No kidding I once saw an old German immigrant woman kill a hawk on the wing from what must have been 60 yards away. There are no problems with keeping chickens in the woods that sharp eyes, keen senses, and a good steel trap won't solve, but you must act proactively not just react after the damage is done.

 

[Going Quackers]

I do both here, i don't free range banties here, so no silkie or call duck free ranges, to me their size and in the case of the silkie lack of genuine flight poses a risk. Not everyone can free range, it's a risk, i worry each day by head count whether everyone is safe and sound but my larger birds require to much sq footage to be anything else plus i keep for pest control here so they cannot do that penned up.