Chicken keeping without coops or with mutiple coops

[centrarchid]

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As much as I agree with centarchid that using tribe is outside the norm for use with chickens. It appears to be somewhat proper in the manner used.

I see your logic, but use of tribe is confusing and to my knowledge it is not used in colloquial English of Great Britain with respect to poultry. I am a biologist / zoologist by trade where a version of English is my first language. The accounts givien are hard for me to follow owing to some word choice and assumptions concerning chicken biology and ways of thinking.

 

[Shadrach]

I don't see the correlation between nationality and the post. Which was essentially in support of the manner of use of the words in question.

No, your right. A bit hot under the collar. I'll take the post down.

I see your logic, but use of tribe is confusing and to my knowledge it is not used in colloquial English of Great Britain with respect to poultry. I am a biologist / zoologist by trade where a version of English is my first language. The accounts givien are hard for me to follow owing to some word choice and assumptions concerning chicken biology and ways of thinking.

That is the point I'm trying to make. From my observations here it seems that the word 'tribe' better describes the structure of the social groups here.
If my observations are accurate, and my conclusions valid and these chickens are tribal, then it is possible that other breeds are also tribal. If this is so, then treating them as tribes, rather than flocks could influence. how we keep chickens

 

[centrarchid]

My flocks / subflocks / harems have home ranges and territories, often at same time on same property. That I will describe later. Behavior still would not fall well under what is tribal.

Flocks here can be in natural and managed social groups for extended periods of time.

 

[Shadrach]

My flocks / subflocks / harems have home ranges and territories, often at same time on same property. That I will describe later. Behavior still would not fall well under what is tribal.

Flocks here can be in natural and managed social groups for extended periods of time.

I don't understand your point.

 

[centrarchid]

I don't understand your point.

Exactly, and it relates to use of tribe.

 

[Shadrach]

You originally intended to gather information for your writing. It seems that you've stimulated quite a good discussion. From the information I've gathered your goal appears to be "What's best for the chicken?" Am I correct in this assumption. Then what actually is "best" for modern breeds? Would the intensive purpose directed breeding thrive if left to their own? Would it take generations to get back to their roots of survival instinct? And I do agree that breeding has been tailored to suit human design. As I seriously doubt a breed like Cornish cross would exist without intervention. But... Since these breeds are what they are now. Thriving in captive conditions, and providing what is desired of them. Could it not be argued that this is what is best for them. Since a good portion of their natural ability to forage and avoid predation had been bred out in favor of other traits. Are "we" now not responsible for seeing to the well being.

I post this not as argument to your point of view. I find your discussion fascinating and enjoy seeing different angles on the subject. In no way is this intended to offend.

When I first started looking after the chickens here I had no intention of writing a book.
It took four years of observing their behaviour and taking notes before I thought I had something worth writing about. Initially I was just curios, then fascinated and then completely obsessed.
I read everything, academic studies, books, articles and forums. What I found was my observations and the tentative conclusions I came to didn’t match some of the information I had read elsewhere.
I decided to write a book about the chickens here. It didn’t really matter at the time whether the conclusions I came to fitted in with what I had read elsewhere.

There comes a point when trying to learn, particularly when it comes to the behaviour of any kind of creatures, that reading what other people have written becomes pointless and what you need to do is study the creature itself.

I have all the information I want for the book now and the book is almost finished in draft form.

I would love to answer that my only goal is what’s best for the chicken but it wouldn’t be an honest answer. It’s far more complicated.

I don’t know what is best for modern breeds.
A few years ago the garden shed that Tribe1 used as a coop blew down in a gale. It fell to bits.
There weren’t any empty coops, just a small triangular maternity coop.
At dusk the Marans went and found places to spend the night. None of them went up trees despite there being plenty to choose from, they’re just too heavy to make even the lower branches.
Most of them found places in piles of straw, or under a sheep feeder, or in the case of Major the senior cock, wedged into a corner of a hay rack; completely unsafe.
I collected them all every night and distributed them between the existing occupied coops until I had made a new coop for them.
For breeds such as the Maran and the heavier meat breeds I can’t imagine they can be reverse bred to a state where they could free range 24/7 and survive without human intervention.
However, Fat Bird (Maran senior hen in Tribe 1) has survived free ranging during the day for eight years. Given the Marans life span in free range conditions is estimated to be ten years she’s doing very well. Fat Bird is the boss in Tribe 1 but I don’t tell Cillin the cock this. Fat Bird has taught all the cross breeds that now comprise Tribe 1 what she knows and my hopes for their survival are high.

So, no, I don’t believe intensive purpose directed breeds could survive on their own and we are responsible for their well being. I would prefer they had as much freedom as possible but for many people who keep these breeds, the time involved and the expense is too great and the risk of predation is too high and I understand this. That doesn’t stop me wanting to encourage people to give their chickens as much freedom as possible.

For the lighter breeds, I feel, but I have no evidence, that reverse breeding and free ranging could eventually produce a chicken capable of surviving in the wild. I don’t know how many generations it might take and I expect the losses to be large. A problem is, what happens when you’ve bred a fowl that can survive in the wild in one environment and humans move it to a strange environment.
Could the chicken learn fast enough to survive?



An observation.

It was decided to move the hinges on the fridge door in the main house to the other side of the door so it opened the other way. It took us almost a month before everyone stopped tugging at the wrong side.

I had to move one of the coops and turned it through 180 degrees and altered the coop opening because the sliding door was sticking. It looked different.

It took the chickens two days before they all went to the correct side of the coop first time round.

 

[JedJackson]

If you live in a rural area in a warm climate it is quite possible to go without a coop, but some type of structure is needed if you want to protect them from hot or wet weather, and also if you want a place where it is easy to collect the eggs.

When I was a boy we lived in S. Californian in an equestrian community on the outskirts of a rather large city, and many people there did not lock up their chickens because there was space for them to roam and roost without annoying neighbors. Our house had 1.3 acres and a third of that was an area enclosed by 6 foot high chain link fence, and this was where I raised my chickens.

I had coops and runs for the breeds I showed and sold, Golden Sebrights, Golden duckwing Phoenix, and non-bearded buff laced Polish. The rest of the chickens made do with a large, partially covered outbuilding that had nest boxes, feeders and waterers, and ladder roosts. For a long while, the door was always open, and the birds lived mostly outside. Few of the chickens slept inside. Silkie mixes and Cochin mixes, mainly. The Leghorns, American games, lightweight bantams and Phoenix crosses would fly right on up top of that chain link fence, and from there would fly up into huge Eucalyptus trees. But in heavy storms they slept in the coop, because they learned they could literally be knocked out of trees on suck nights. Santa Ana wind storms are no joke.

The chickens were happy, healthy and ranged far and wide both inside the fenced area, and out of it. I noticed that the hens that were especially intent on brooding would sneak off to secret nests, sometimes in neighbors' yards acres away from home, and nearly impossible to find. I'd sometimes stumble across one with only the eggsells from hatching left behind. The hens always knew to come home for food and water with their new chicks.

The main problem with this hands off approach is you need lots of space to avoid upsetting neighbors, and you can expect plenty of losses. Those are just facts. You also still need to feed them and to keep cool, clean water available.

Also, the roosters will fight. I had one dominant Easter egger/American game cock and one subordinant Phoenix cross cock that pretty much ruled over 50 plus hens. Other roosters that survived were outliers who lived and slept apart from the flock and had to feed/water themselves through stealth. That's also how they attracted hens. They'd sometimes get a little harem going, one by one, in the daytime and hope they had the chance to mate before they were spotted by the dominant cocks. If they were, look out, because they would get chased and have to fly high up into the trees to avoid getting beaten up. This would happen in broad daylight, and those roosters would stay up there the rest of the day and through the night, descending early in the morning and sneaking food/water that way.

I think you make a mistake in assuming chickens are the same as jungle fowl. They are not. Chickens are more aggressive, especially males, and the hens spend a lot more time laying and eating to make all of those eggs possible. Jungle fowl are much more seasonal birds as regards mating and laying, and they can and do move greater distances to avoid competition. They are also much better at evading predators, and their instincts and bodies are honed for self preservation, much more so that semi-domesticated chickens, not matter how wild they may appear.

I don't think mixing is much of a problem unless wildish chickens are mixed with heavy breeds, which would hurt their chances of escaping predators, or mixing with non-sitters, which hurts their chances at reproduction.

However, Leghorns and Penedesencas, and probably other Mediterranean breeds are very good at avoiding predators and sleeping in trees even if egg setting has been bred out of them. Weight and temperament are the main factors. Games are probably the best free rangers. Icelandics, also. Bantams are too easily picked off by hawks and owls.

There are also many places where chickens run feral, and seem to do okay. Hawaii practically has an epidemic of them, Key West also. There were feral chickens living under a freeway overpass for many years in S California, and also a whole bunch at Knott's Berry Farm. by the parking lots. Whether the last two populations remain or were removed or died out would be interesting to know.

I think in an ideal world I should like to raise chickens this way, but it is not an ideal world. Where I live now, in the pacific Northwest north of Seattle, such a situation would be unthinkable. It is much too wet for the chickens to live oudoors, unprotected, for much of the year, and the chicks would die if they weren't protected from our wet, chilly mornings. THe number and types of predators are difficult to cope with even with well protected coops and runs. If they were on their own it would be catastophic.

So, over the years I've grown wiser and changed how I think about this matter. To me, it's a no-brainer. I want my chickens to have plenty of space and enjoy nature as much as possible, but I want them to survive. That's my bottom line.

 

[Shadrach]

If you live in a rural area in a warm climate it is quite possible to go without a coop, but some type of structure is needed if you want to protect them from hot or wet weather, and also if you want a place where it is easy to collect the eggs.

When I was a boy we lived in S. Californian in an equestrian community on the outskirts of a rather large city, and many people there did not lock up their chickens because there was space for them to roam and roost without annoying neighbors. Our house had 1.3 acres and a third of that was an area enclosed by 6 foot high chain link fence, and this was where I raised my chickens.

I had coops and runs for the breeds I showed and sold, Golden Sebrights, Golden duckwing Phoenix, and non-bearded buff laced Polish. The rest of the chickens made do with a large, partially covered outbuilding that had nest boxes, feeders and waterers, and ladder roosts. For a long while, the door was always open, and the birds lived mostly outside. Few of the chickens slept inside. Silkie mixes and Cochin mixes, mainly. The Leghorns, American games, lightweight bantams and Phoenix crosses would fly right on up top of that chain link fence, and from there would fly up into huge Eucalyptus trees. But in heavy storms they slept in the coop, because they learned they could literally be knocked out of trees on suck nights. Santa Ana wind storms are no joke.

The chickens were happy, healthy and ranged far and wide both inside the fenced area, and out of it. I noticed that the hens that were especially intent on brooding would sneak off to secret nests, sometimes in neighbors' yards acres away from home, and nearly impossible to find. I'd sometimes stumble across one with only the eggsells from hatching left behind. The hens always knew to come home for food and water with their new chicks.

The main problem with this hands off approach is you need lots of space to avoid upsetting neighbors, and you can expect plenty of losses. Those are just facts. You also still need to feed them and to keep cool, clean water available.

Also, the roosters will fight. I had one dominant Easter egger/American game cock and one subordinant Phoenix cross cock that pretty much ruled over 50 plus hens. Other roosters that survived were outliers who lived and slept apart from the flock and had to feed/water themselves through stealth. That's also how they attracted hens. They'd sometimes get a little harem going, one by one, in the daytime and hope they had the chance to mate before they were spotted by the dominant cocks. If they were, look out, because they would get chased and have to fly high up into the trees to avoid getting beaten up. This would happen in broad daylight, and those roosters would stay up there the rest of the day and through the night, descending early in the morning and sneaking food/water that way.

I think you make a mistake in assuming chickens are the same as jungle fowl. They are not. Chickens are more aggressive, especially males, and the hens spend a lot more time laying and eating to make all of those eggs possible. Jungle fowl are much more seasonal birds as regards mating and laying, and they can and do move greater distances to avoid competition. They are also much better at evading predators, and their instincts and bodies are honed for self preservation, much more so that semi-domesticated chickens, not matter how wild they may appear.

I don't think mixing is much of a problem unless wildish chickens are mixed with heavy breeds, which would hurt their chances of escaping predators, or mixing with non-sitters, which hurts their chances at reproduction.

However, Leghorns and Penedesencas, and probably other Mediterranean breeds are very good at avoiding predators and sleeping in trees even if egg setting has been bred out of them. Weight and temperament are the main factors. Games are probably the best free rangers. Icelandics, also. Bantams are too easily picked off by hawks and owls.

There are also many places where chickens run feral, and seem to do okay. Hawaii practically has an epidemic of them, Key West also. There were feral chickens living under a freeway overpass for many years in S California, and also a whole bunch at Knott's Berry Farm. by the parking lots. Whether the last two populations remain or were removed or died out would be interesting to know.

I think in an ideal world I should like to raise chickens this way, but it is not an ideal world. Where I live now, in the pacific Northwest north of Seattle, such a situation would be unthinkable. It is much too wet for the chickens to live oudoors, unprotected, for much of the year, and the chicks would die if they weren't protected from our wet, chilly mornings. THe number and types of predators are difficult to cope with even with well protected coops and runs. If they were on their own it would be catastophic.

So, over the years I've grown wiser and changed how I think about this matter. To me, it's a no-brainer. I want my chickens to have plenty of space and enjoy nature as much as possible, but I want them to survive. That's my bottom line.

Great post, thanks.
Interesting that there are 'feral' chickens in the places you mention. I had no idea.
I don't think chickens are the same as jungle fowl. I certainly haven't written this.
Of course climate makes a difference. It's the heat here that can be a problem. It does freeze in the winter, -6 degrees Centigrade is about as low as it gets. The chickens cope with these cold nights better than they do with the really hot days, + 38 degrees C some days last year.
I just want to remind anyone who hasn't read the entire thread, I keep the chickens here in a multicooped arrangement.They are free range during daylight hours but roost in coops overnight.

 

[JedJackson]

Great post, thanks.
Interesting that there are 'feral' chickens in the places you mention. I had no idea.
I don't think chickens are the same as jungle fowl. I certainly haven't written this.
Of course climate makes a difference. It's the heat here that can be a problem. It does freeze in the winter, -6 degrees Centigrade is about as low as it gets. The chickens cope with these cold nights better than they do with the really hot days, + 38 degrees C some days last year.
I just want to remind anyone who hasn't read the entire thread, I keep the chickens here in a multicooped arrangement.They are free range during daylight hours but roost in coops overnight.

Sorry if I misrepresented your views on jungle fowl. But it is an important point to remember. Even feral ones usually need help from humans. Another thing about jungle fowl is that they do not automatically adapt to different areas even if those areas have a climate similar to their ecological range. Red jungle fowl were released in the American south at one point to be used as a game/hunting bird, and they didn't survive there. That shows that there are a lot of factors involved that aren't immediately obvious.

All that said, if I could completely free range mine without threat of weather or predators, I probably would.

 

[townchicks]

Just for the sake of argument, why would you want feral chickens? Seems pointless to me. BTW, feral chickens are rampant in Hawaii. They are very similar to jungle fowl in appearance, but are not genetically jungle fowl. Most visitors, myself included, find them charming, but a lot of the residents find them a nuisance. Feral animals of all sorts, cats, goats and hogs and even dogs come to mind right off, are problem animals that cause a lot of destruction, and in general do not live long and healthy lives. I find the observation about the refrigerator interesting and amusing, but clearly it's apples and oranges. Not saying that chickens aren't smarter than most folks give them credit for, but they usually have one track minds. Humans have multitrack minds, and often are thinking about other stuff, when they reach automatically for a handle that isn't there anymore.