Challenges of living in the woods with chickens

[Florida Bullfrog]

Well, I wrote the book on raising chickens in the woods.

Too much to boil down to a paragraph or two. There’s threads all over the forum from myself and others about their 24-7 free range birds in predator-rich environments. But basically boils down to genetics, survival of the fittest, and knowing the history of chickens. Free-range, semi-feral, have been how most chickens were kept for most of history.

I raise mine in the deep Florida woods.

And yes, I have a beautiful green lawn.

 

[Camo chicken146]

It's an amazing book I read it in a day I liked it so much, I definitely wanna do something in the future like that with gamefowl

 

[TOMTE]

Well, I wrote the book on raising chickens in the woods.

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Too much to boil down to a paragraph or two. There’s threads all over the forum from myself and others about their 24-7 free range birds in predator-rich environments. But basically boils down to genetics, survival of the fittest, and knowing the history of chickens. Free-range, semi-feral, have been how most chickens were kept for most of history.

I raise mine in the deep Florida woods.

And yes, I have a beautiful green lawn.

View attachment 4152323

I'll add it to my reading list

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

It's an amazing book I read it in a day I liked it so much, I definitely wanna do something in the future like that with gamefowl

Very good book!

 

[Jkbaca]

I also raise chickens (and goats, geese, ducks, guineas, and turkeys) in the woods. Ido a couple of things that have kept predators at bay and give them greens and veggies.

1: I have very hot electric fencing around their area. It encircles a bunch of trees.

2: I also put aviary netting over their area. That winds around trees, too. Our trees are very, very tall (50'+), so it's easyish to put the netting around the trunks and under the lowest branches.

3: I have livestock guardian dogs. They are in with the goats most of the time, but it's enough to keep the whole of the property safe.

4: I grow flowers, herbs, and veggies just for my animals. I have a chicken garden in a small clearing. I grow squashes and flowers in there and give them access every once in a while.

5: I've made grazing boxes and grown fodder for them, as others have suggested. I have a small greenhouse with grow lights for this express purpose.

 

[No Coop No Problem]

It's not about disliking a "pretty pink tree," it's about trying to protect native pollinators which are essential to our own survival.

How does one plant over another threaten native pollinators when both species in question produce nectar? Even Japanese Knotweed, the most hardcore and destructive invasive out there produces an extreme abundance of flowers that lasts for months longer than any native species I'm aware of. Consequently there are now regions where knotweed is the primary food source for native pollinators for a good chunk of the year. They even call the special honey that (invasive) honeybees produce with these flowers by the special name of "bamboo honey"

In short, I think this is a very complicated situation that can't simply be summarized as "native good, foreign bad". I also suspect that herbicides and pesticides being sprayed everywhere are the main cause of the pollinator crisis

Decades ago my car would be covered in lovebugs each summer. Now there's nothing. Same region, but all of the bugs are gone. It's probably glysophate being sprayed everywhere

 

[TOMTE]

How does one plant over another threaten native pollinators when both species in question produce nectar? Even Japanese Knotweed, the most hardcore and destructive invasive out there produces an extreme abundance of flowers that lasts for months longer than any native species I'm aware of. Consequently there are now regions where knotweed is the primary food source for native pollinators for a good chunk of the year. They even call the special honey that (invasive) honeybees produce with these flowers by the special name of "bamboo honey"

In short, I think this is a very complicated situation that can't simply be summarized as "native good, foreign bad". I also suspect that herbicides and pesticides being sprayed everywhere are the main cause of the pollinator crisis

Decades ago my car would be covered in lovebugs each summer. Now there's nothing. Same region, but all of the bugs are gone. It's probably glysophate being sprayed everywhere

Please educate yourself on native pollenators and their symbiotic relationships with native plants that have evolved over centuries and sometimes tens of thousands, even potentially millions of years. It really is that deep.

***It isn't just about nectar. It isn't just about pollen. It's about color. It's about flower structure. It's about how these organisms have specifically evolved in tandem with each other to continue surviving.

Native pollenator populations are declining because invasive plants which can't sustain them outcompete the native plants that they have historically fed on and that they have a symbiotic relationship with, invasive generalist pollenators are taking over, and light and noise pollution are also doing their fair share of damage too.

It's more complex than that but there's an extremely simplified explanation among plenty of others that you've been given. And yes, pesticides and herbicides and stuff also do a lot of damage. That doesn't mean that invasive plants and animals aren't also a huge issue.

Read books, articles, and other scientific studies by qualified groups or individuals on the topic and just about everything credible actually does generally point to "native > introduced" for the health and longevity of local ecosystems.

 

[TOMTE]

How does one plant over another threaten native pollinators when both species in question produce nectar?

Also, @Appalachickens gave you a recommendation in the reply you're quoting to answer your question and probably many more right here:

If you are open to learning about it, you might consider reading Doug Tallamy's books, which can probably explain why planting natives matter better than I can.

Are you asking questions because you want to learn or because you want to argue?

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

In short, I think this is a very complicated situation that can't simply be summarized as "native good, foreign bad". I also suspect that herbicides and pesticides being sprayed everywhere are the main cause of the pollinator crisis

Decades ago my car would be covered in lovebugs each summer. Now there's nothing. Same region, but all of the bugs are gone. It's probably glysophate being sprayed everywhere

I agree with this on both levels.

First, I would suspect widespread pesticide use and otherwise contaminating the environment with chemicals as a primary killer of native insects moreso than suspecting introduced flowers.

Second, the issue of “invasive” vs “native” is complicated. What is “native?” Plants and animals spread to new places with commonality. We can watch it happen within one human lifetime. Many animals have had nearly world-wide distributions at some point. North America had much of Africa’s wildlife in the not so distant past. My Florida used to have lot South American wildlife.

Kinds and species are constantly in flux. Ecosystems aren’t static. Change is constant. Life adapts. It was designed to. Nature not as fragile as we often paint it these days.

 

[No Coop No Problem]

Please educate yourself on native pollenators and their symbiotic relationships with native plants that have evolved over centuries and sometimes tens of thousands, even potentially millions of years. It really is that deep

The animals and plants on Ascension Island mostly arrived within a 100 year time period and they sorted themselves perfectly into all ecological niches despite not evolving alongside one another. To quote a book on this subject-

I was on Ascension because the very existence of this forest is controversial. It is more than a patch of trees, more than a botanical garden. It is possibly the most cosmopolitan tropical forest in the world, and it is said to be the only one that is entirely created by humans. Moreover, researchers who have visited the forest herald it as a fully functioning ecosystem, created from scratch in little more than a century from fragments assembled at random from around the world. The vegetation, insects, and other species interact in countless ways, providing vital services for each other. Forest ecosystems are not supposed to happen like that. Conventional ecology says their complex interactions emerge only as a result of long-term evolution of species. As the mountain's genial warden Stedson Stroud put it, in a paper with David Catling of the University of Washington, the species on Green Mountain “have bucked the standard theory that complexity emerges only through coevolution.”