Chicken keeping without coops or with mutiple coops

[LittleMissCountry]

My husband's grandma had a situation much like you described. They didn't have much money, and lived on a pig farm. They had 30 chickens, give or take, at any one time. The chickenz were completely free range with no coop. They would roost in trees or in the barn or outbuildings. They fed them scraps from the garden and grew grains for them. They butchered the chickens for food and collected eggs each day for breakfast, or for cooking. They didn't worry about finding hidden nests, and those eggs hatched out to keep the flock going. They never bought chickens after that. I am sure some were lost to predators but they were not pets, and as long as they had enough to live on, they didn't worry about it. They also had a dog, though, that would protect livestock. My husband did a lot of egg collecting growing up. He actually laughed at me the first time I talked to him about what I had learned about chickens in my research, because it was the exact opposite of his experience growing up.
However, it is a big difference having 30 chickens as a food source when you are constantly having chicks hatch versus having four chickens in your backyard with neighbors not too far away.

 

[True Patriot]

Your point of view is interesting. And I do agree that completely free ranging all the time would be more natural for a flock. However in a lot of circumstances it's not practical. I'll use myself as an example.
I currently have 8 birds. Mixed breeds, 5 pullets, 3 cockerel. (2 cockerel will be invited to dinner.) Which will leave six total, and a 5 to 1 ratio. I live on 2 acres of which 1.3 is swamp and unused. That leaves me approximately 3/4 to work with. I do not intend to extensively breed only raising chicks to replace layers as needed. I have a high predator population. In the last week, I've seen 4 Hawks, 4 raccoons, a skunk, and at least 5 of the neighborhood dogs wandering around. If I've seen these numbers what's been around that I missed. The week before I lost 2 chicks to a snake. I work around 60 hours a week in construction, my wife is disabled and can't provide much help. Given the conditions I have, I don't see a feasable alternative to an enclosed coop and run. I also disagree that raising any livestock for consumption is predation. If I was hunting chickens I would agree with you, but if I raised deer in a barnyard I would call myself a herder not a hunter.

 

[Peppercorngal]

My husband's grandma had a situation much like you described. They didn't have much money, and lived on a pig farm. They had 30 chickens, give or take, at any one time. The chickenz were completely free range with no coop. They would roost in trees or in the barn or outbuildings. They fed them scraps from the garden and grew grains for them. They butchered the chickens for food and collected eggs each day for breakfast, or for cooking. They didn't worry about finding hidden nests, and those eggs hatched out to keep the flock going. They never bought chickens after that. I am sure some were lost to predators but they were not pets, and as long as they had enough to live on, they didn't worry about it. They also had a dog, though, that would protect livestock. My husband did a lot of egg collecting growing up. He actually laughed at me the first time I talked to him about what I had learned about chickens in my research, because it was the exact opposite of his experience growing up.
However, it is a big difference having 30 chickens as a food source when you are constantly having chicks hatch versus having four chickens in your backyard with neighbors not too far away.

Yes, my Grandfather's farm had the same setup. It was a dairy farm with a few pigs, "wild" chickens, and the feral cats that were unavoidable. They grew alfalfa for the cows and everything else got the "slop". Chickens lived in the trees, or the barn, free ranged and seemed to do just fine. I remember his setup from my childhood. Looking for the eggs, chasing the cats away, and feeding the calves! I fell in love with this life even then!

 

[Mrs. K]

Very interesting observations. I enjoyed your insight and experience, Shadrach.

Another aspect to this discussion, my husband was quite emphatic about having a coup, his parents had a coup, but his grandparents did not. What DH hated, was when the birds roosted anywhere they wanted, often it was in the rafters of the buildings, and therefore pooped on machinery and saddles, which my DH hated.

Mrs K

 

[Shadrach]

Thank you Mrs. K. It's kind of you to say so.
I can empathise with your husbands point of view. Some days I feel like I was born with a mop in one hand and tissue in the other.
Letting the chickens into the house has some unforseen social complications; telling your guests to mind the chicken shit on the floor and not to touch the hen in the box next to the arm chair isn't quite the same as offering them a beer.

You may like the stories I've posted:
https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/shadrachs-stories.1263724/

 

[SGH]

I’m interested in any experiences that people have had keeping chickens without a coop.
There are a number of farms and smallholdings locally here in Catalonia, Spain that have been keeping chickens for generations without purpose built coops.
4 kilometres down the mountain where i live there are 9 chickens who roost up a tree at night.
Across the valley there are a number of farms where the chickens roost in open barns, up trees, and in spare rooms in the house.
I’m particularly interested in hearing from people who have mixed breeds living in such conditions
I realise that many people will consider keeping chickens in this manner irresponsible but chickens are kept in similar conditions all over the world and have been for generations.
The chicken lays all those eggs because in ‘natural’ conditions few chicks survive.
I also realise that many breeds now can’t get up a tree because of human interference by target breeding for particular characteristics; heavy meat breeds and some dual purpose breeds for examples.

I’m using a multiple coop system at the moment; a coop per tribe, but the chickens don’t always come home and the Bantams in particular go up the trees every night. This isn’t a problem, they come down when I call them (mostly) and go into their coop but it does demonstrate that the Bantams and the cross breeds still have the instinct to sleep in the trees.

It seems to me that a lot of ‘old knowledge’ based on generations of experience and observation has been forgotten as the chicken became product and egg and meat production became more important than the long term welfare of the chicken.

There are a few pieces of old knowledge that I have picked up as I gathered information for my book that reading some of the problems on this forum might be worth bearing in mind.

1) Don’t mix breeds
2) One cock for every 3 to 5 hens
3) Provide lots of cover, bushes, trees, plants even man made shelters
4) Chickens fight but fights in the family or tribe tend not to be serious while fights between cocks and hens from other tribes often are.

We have had chickens for 10 years with no coop or run.

I’d like to state, that we never meant to have chickens, they just showed up here lol.

We live in a county island on 2 1/2 acre properties with horse privileges. About 1/3 of the families in the neighborhood have chickens and or horses.

Our chicken venture started with a neighbors hen going broody and hatching baby chicks in our hedges. Since then we have had chickens! Over the years I’ve had to rehome many roosters, and actually have made a decision to have no roosters.

The chickens at my best guess are Easter eggers and mutts - lots of smaller red chickens, many have green legs. They roost in our tree at night. I feed them everyday when I feed the horses, they see me and come running.

They free range all over grass pastures, horse stalls and horse barn. They lay brown, green and white eggs. Finding the eggs is an Easter egg hunt, normally they are in the corner of a horse stall or in the hay stack.

We don’t have any predators here except neighborhood dogs - which none are free roaming and all are in fenced yards. Of course, over the years we have had a few incidents with a neighbors dog getting out and we have lost a few chickens here and there.

I’ve never had any sick chickens or dealt with any disease. I’ve only seen mites once, and it was an awful experience

We have bulldogs, but they are fenced separately in our backyard with a short decorative 4’ fence. Some of the chickens use to get in our back yard, only to be chased by our dogs so they learn quick not to go over and into our backyard.

We’ve never had our dogs kill a chicken, although our brindle did bring one in the house through the doggie door! Quite a surprise, and glad we were home. The chicken believe it or not was unhurt, just shaken up and missing a few feathers. Needless to say, chickens are pretty smart and we haven’t had one in the backyard for years.

If you were considering keeping chickens loose like we have, and the roost in trees, I think you are better off with chickens that can fly well and are a little flighty.

FYI, our weather is very mild in the winter, rarely rains, only freezes a few times, but is HOT in the summer.

We haven’t had a rooster in years, and we are down to 2 old hens now. I just decided a month ago to cull the old hens and start with a new flock. I did build a coop (because I wanted Silkies) so waiting to see how this venture goes with the new breeds.

 

[Shadrach]

This is very interesting, I look forward to your book when it is finished. Any insights into chicken behavior is always welcome. However, IMO, just because something "has been done this way for generations" doesn't make it the right way to do things. So many factors are different in these times, and while I do believe that we can learn from and appreciate the old ways, I do not believe that it worked just fine, even back then. I think they sort of got away with it, instead.Generations of family farms raised chickens that way, sure, but predation was always a problem, so much so that ALL predators were shot on sight, communities often hired special "critter getters" to clear the area of wolves, coyotes, bears, etc to the point that they were completely wiped out in many parts of the country. This hunting pressure also made animals very wary of humans, so many avoided any human settlement. Nowadays, we know that this is not good for the prey animals and the overall ecology. Additionally, people are rapidly spreading into areas that once were the territory exclusively of wildlife, and they have nowhere else to move to.We also need to take into account that while there may not have been a purpose built coop, most farms had barns and other sheds, etc that the chickens sheltered in. Those free range birds also had the opportunity to breed prolifically, and most were eaten as soon as they were no longer pulling their own weight.So losses were part of the equation. I read a book, "Why Did The Chicken Cross The World? ", that discusses the original jungle fowl that were the progenitors of our modern chickens, and how extremely flighty they were, so much so that seeing one in the wild is an extreme rarity, and captive birds often kill themselves in attempts to escape at the approach of their keepers. Thus they survived roosting in trees and living in a world where everything eats them. Our modern day chickens have been bred for hundreds of generations to get that instinct out of them, so it would be convenient for the farmer to gather eggs, and catch them. To throw them back into survival mode, with out taking into account how we humans have modified them, is not, IMO, the right thing for the birds.

Thank you for taking the time to post.

I was hoping, rather naively I see with hindsight, to avoid a debate about the rights and wrongs of free range chicken keeping. I wrote, and I meant, that I was interested in hearing from people who keep chickens un-cooped, or muticooped. I’m particularly interested in multi coop chicken keeping where a number of social groups have been allowed the freedom to live with whome they choose and where they choose. One of the reasons I’m interested in this method of keeping chickens is that under such a system it’s possible to get a better idea of chicken behaviour when human interference is at a minimum. Once we have a better understanding of this subject then we are in a much better position to judge if our current methods of chicken keeping are detrimental to the chickens long term wellfare and will be in a better position to take measures, if appropriate, to improve the lot of the chicken.

It has only been fairly recently that chicken behaviour has become a topic of scientific interest. What scientists are discovering is the chicken is far more intelligent than it has been given credit for. Until recently, the old knowledge, mainly from smallholders who kept free range chickens and observed their behaviour had been all there was.

The bulk of the research concerning chickens was directed at better egg laying capacity and the creation of breeds that produced more body weight for a given amount of feed.

On this smallhoding I have an unusaul oppertunity to study free range chicken behaviour and maybe contribute to the collective knowledge by way of my observations taken over a long period of time. Consider for example, that a phd student studying biology, or veterinary science may only spend eight weeks in the field and that may be split between more than one species. I've been observing the chickens here for seven years, I estimate, a minimum of three hours a day in direct contact.

In order to study the chickens behaviour one needs to let it ‘behave’ and I believe the best way to do this, for humans and chickens, is an un-cooped, or multi cooped arrangement.

There is a valid argument that you put forward that human interference has so damaged the chickens ‘natural’ behaviour and it’s ability to survive, that the lot of the chicken is to be forever captive. That’s not what I’ve seen here and if I believed this to be true I wouldn’t be writing this post, be on this forum, or writing a book.

What I see is a highly intelligent creature that has the ability to adapt and learn, live in a social hierarchy with the minimum of conflict, demonstrate emotional responses, despite all the abuses it has suffered and an increasing number of scientific studies agree with this. If only humans could do as well.

As you point out, humans have bred chickens to have a particular set of charitaistics. It doesn't seem far fetched to believe given the will, we could breed chickens with characteristics that are better suited to free range living.

A legitimate point of debate is whether or not the environment in which the chickens here live is suitable for free range chicken keeping. I would agree that it probably isn't. The predation rate is too high and the willingness of the people who own the land to invest in the chickens is too low.


I hope I haven’t painted a romantic picture of ‘the old days’.
I do have a great respect for a great deal of ‘old knowledge,’ which is still relevant today.
You write as if the practice of eradicating predators is a thing of the past. Maybe it is in some places, I suspect because they don’t have any left. I’m lucky, I’m living in a National Park where many of the predators are protected species. Outside the park things haven’t changed all that much; they still shoot the hawks, hunt the foxes, trap the weasels etc etc.

It’s a mistake, I believe to think that because the majority of those who contribute to this forum have the chickens best interests at heart, the rest of the world is the same.

Finally, there seems to be an assumption that those who free range their chickens are heartless, irresponsible people who neglect the welfare of these creature. I deeply resent this, and so I believe do many others, the majority on this forum at least care just as deeply about the welfare of their chickens as those who keep chickens in coops, they just have a different view of what welfare means.

The people who ‘free range’ the chicken are not throwing them back into survival mode with little or no regard for how humans have modified them as you seem to suggest. The majority of free range chicken keepers I would argue, spend more time and put more effort into caring for their flocks than those who keep chickens in coops. You don’t for example hear of cooped chicken owners out late at night with a torch trying to find a sitting hen. Cooped chickens tend not to suffer the injuries of their free range counterparts so the costs both in labour and money of the necessary medical care are higher.

Writing for myself, I spend hours caring the the tribes here and many of my posts and the stories I have written demonstrate this.

I've attatched some pictures to counter your your point that keeping free range chickens is tantamount to throwing them back into survival mode.

Fat Bird after her computer lessons. She's going to putting her perspective on this matter soon.

Donk and Dent, not entirely happy with the bathing facilities.

Mel and Fudge (sisters) Complaining that there is only one nestbox in the house.

Mini Minx "Where's the baby food then?"

 

[Snackdraggin]

Are the cocks related?
How many hens does each cock herd?
Are you in a position to build separate coops for the cocks and their hens?
Do you want them in a coop at night or are you still happy with them roosting outside?

Got them from the same vreeder but one is a blue ameracauna and one is a blue isbar. The isbar is MUCH smaller so I think he just yields all the time. Big roo has 5 hens, lil guy has 3, then 3 hens that kinda float around or sleep alone or with the Turkey. Not in a position to build dual coops at the moment, tho I plan to asap. I would prefer they all roost in a secure coop at night but I'm lucky to live in a spot with very few predators. My neighbors have a few dogs and there's a feral cat but my dog patrols the yard and sleeps near the coop now.

 

[Shadrach]

The problem with this is............. where do you find the eggs?

I work outside mostly and you learn to listen to hens making an escort call.
I know which hen is calling and watch for her cock when he goes to collect her.
This narrows the search area a lot and most of the hens have favorite laying spots.
I probably lose a third of the eggs laid, but for me it's not about the eggs, I'm trying to understand their behavior.

 

[townchicks]

This is very interesting, I look forward to your book when it is finished. Any insights into chicken behavior is always welcome. However, IMO, just because something "has been done this way for generations" doesn't make it the right way to do things. So many factors are different in these times, and while I do believe that we can learn from and appreciate the old ways, I do not believe that it worked just fine, even back then. I think they sort of got away with it, instead.Generations of family farms raised chickens that way, sure, but predation was always a problem, so much so that ALL predators were shot on sight, communities often hired special "critter getters" to clear the area of wolves, coyotes, bears, etc to the point that they were completely wiped out in many parts of the country. This hunting pressure also made animals very wary of humans, so many avoided any human settlement. Nowadays, we know that this is not good for the prey animals and the overall ecology. Additionally, people are rapidly spreading into areas that once were the territory exclusively of wildlife, and they have nowhere else to move to.We also need to take into account that while there may not have been a purpose built coop, most farms had barns and other sheds, etc that the chickens sheltered in. Those free range birds also had the opportunity to breed prolifically, and most were eaten as soon as they were no longer pulling their own weight.So losses were part of the equation. I read a book, "Why Did The Chicken Cross The World? ", that discusses the original jungle fowl that were the progenitors of our modern chickens, and how extremely flighty they were, so much so that seeing one in the wild is an extreme rarity, and captive birds often kill themselves in attempts to escape at the approach of their keepers. Thus they survived roosting in trees and living in a world where everything eats them. Our modern day chickens have been bred for hundreds of generations to get that instinct out of them, so it would be convenient for the farmer to gather eggs, and catch them. To throw them back into survival mode, with out taking into account how we humans have modified them, is not, IMO, the right thing for the birds.