Chickens in nature

[Skyeknight]

I would love to hear more about the management side of keeping chickens this way. How many hens and roosters do you have? An estimate would be fine too. Do they move and behave as one big flock or are there multiple smaller flocks? Do you still feed them or do they fully get their food from foraging? If you do feed them how much do you give? About how much space does the flock actually use?

 

[RoostersAreAwesome]

I'm making this thread to show people that chickens can do fine in more natural settings. My chickens are completely organic, live outside 24/7 and sleep in trees. They spend most of their time running around the forest and swamp, existing around countless different types of wild animals

I don't think the gamefowl need me at all, but the production chickens do. Keeping a semi-feral flock is a balancing act of these two genepools- survivors and producers. Currently I'm aiming for 3/4th dual-purpose, 1/4th gamefowl (dunghill) mutts that are camoflaged with the environment. I believe this is the optimal balance for my set-up to keep food on the table

Here's an assortment of pictures since I began keeping chickens, going roughly from old to new. It's been a long journey and I've learned much over the years:
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Credit to my wife for taking most of the good pictures here. Also my LGD deserves credit for making this all much easier. I did this for a year and a half without a dog, which was much more stressful
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I'll post more in the future

Love this silver hen, do you have any more pictures of her?

 

[No Coop No Problem]

Love this silver hen, do you have any more pictures of her?

No good ones. She's half Egyptian Fayoumi (and RIR). They're the flightiest breed I've ever encountered. Absolute nightmare chickens to work with

I would love to hear more about the management side of keeping chickens this way. How many hens and roosters do you have?

Not many at all right now. Maybe 30 hens and zero roosters. This last winter I ate, sold or gave away the majority of my flock (such as all of the Fayoumi) in preparation for this new year. I only want my favorites breeding at this point, so I've reduced my flock to them plus some purely utilitarian production chickens (who compensate for bad breeding decisions I made the last breeding season)

At the moment there's 33 chicks running around outside, with 7 eggs under another new broody, so I should have around 18 males to choose from later this year

Do they move and behave as one big flock or are there multiple smaller flocks?

Their grouping is very fluid and changes regularly throughout the day based on circumstance. Generally speaking though there's many small groups, 2-10 being normal numbers. Chickens will change back and forth from solo to a group role without a seconds hesitation many times each day. Despite this appearant chaos there's some basic groups that form regularly, such as the RIR tribe or the broody mother group

Do you still feed them or do they fully get their food from foraging? If you do feed them how much do you give?

I don't think it's physically possible for anything other than a junglefowl (or something comparable) to fully support itself from the environment

I feed the chickens here twice a day. Honestly not sure the unit of measurement on my scoop, but it looks like a standard 8 oz cup. In the winter with little to forage I gave them 2 scoops in the morning and two in the evening. Now in the spring with better forage and 33 extra developing chicks that number has went up to 3 scoops twice a day

Maybe in the future when I have more fruit growing they'll be able to sustain themselves more. Supposedly red junglefowl get the majority of their calories from fruit

About how much space does the flock actually use?

The adventurous games use no more than 2 acres. The chickens with majority production blood use half of what the games do

I've read before that wild RJF have a territory of around 300 feet in diameter, which is only 1.62 acres total. It's really surprising how little territory they use and desire

 

[WingItRanch]

So interesting. I have 10 acres, partially wooded. I let my chickens out to free range only in the afternoons when I'm home from work until dusk. Even though they have access to 10 acres, they stick within half an acre from their coop.

I noticed an interesting pattern.. in the afternoons when the sun is still shining, they run straight to the tree line and forage in the woods. Then as we get closer to dusk, I see them in the field. I'm guessing it's their instinct to avoid birds of prey like hawks and eagles. It could also be too hot and they like the shade until dusk.

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

This is fascinating. I am about to begin my own sort-of free ranging in the south (north of Alabama but still south) and I have seen more ads for game fowl than I ever did back west. I am going to get rolling with the heritage breeds I have planned for now but I am curious about integrating game fowl. My dog is practically useless. Partly because she sleeps inside and partly because she doesn’t know what to bark at haha. So I am going to let the birds out mid-morning and cross my fingers they come home around dusk. I am putting a lot of stock in coop placement for deterring predators right now but we’ll see how it goes. I have a couple things in place but nothing like the electric fence/hawk netting etc that people have warned me I should have. Are the game fowl more coop-averse by nature? Will they be apt to go deeper into the forest if there is a lot of activity near the coop?

 

[No Coop No Problem]

Are the game fowl more coop-averse by nature?

I can't really answer this because I've never tried to coop anything, but I can tell you that they took to the forest like a duck to water. To this day I've never lost a pure game to predation

My original flock was half American Gamefowl, half RIR. The games all naturally tree roosted. Half of the RIR copied them and also began tree roosting. You could see them literally watching the gamefowl roost, then go over to the trees and practice doing it themselves. Direct learning through observation. However half of the RIR didn't care to learn and would just sleep on the ground in a big pile. Naturally the tree sleepers lived on and the ground sleepers perished to predation. The first half year of chicken keeping was the time of greatest predation and natural selection

Will they be apt to go deeper into the forest if there is a lot of activity near the coop?

My chickens don't run off into the forest because of activity here. They just shift around to somewhere else nearby. When chickens do go off into the forest it's a deliberate quest to seek forage. Maybe it's because I have a perimeter fence up around the core housing area, because they won't hop it without specific intention

In fact production chickens don't jump the fence at all. Only gamefowl jump the fence, and only the broody game moms jump it regularly. They're also the chickens that travel the farthest. I think the game mothers are both seeking forage and deliberately training their young

I've only had production hens go broody a few times and they raise their young in a lazy manner similar to how their live their normal lives. Hanging out close to home

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

I can't really answer this because I've never tried to coop anything, but I can tell you that they took to the forest like a duck to water. To this day I've never lost a pure game to predation

My original flock was half American Gamefowl, half RIR. The games all naturally tree roosted. Half of the RIR copied them and also began tree roosting. You could see them literally watching the gamefowl roost, then go over to the trees and practice doing it themselves. Direct learning through observation. However half of the RIR didn't care to learn and would just sleep on the ground in a big pile. Naturally the tree sleepers lived on and the ground sleepers perished to predation. The first half year of chicken keeping was the time of greatest predation and natural selection

My chickens don't run off into the forest because of activity here. They just shift around to somewhere else nearby. When chickens do go off into the forest it's a deliberate quest to seek forage. Maybe it's because I have a perimeter fence up around the core housing area, because they won't hop it without specific intention

In fact production chickens don't jump the fence at all. Only gamefowl jump the fence, and only the broody game moms jump it regularly. They're also the chickens that travel the farthest. I think the game mothers are both seeking forage and deliberately training their young

I've only had production hens go broody a few times and they raise their young in a lazy manner similar to how their live their normal lives. Hanging out close to home

Our fencing right now is…inadequate. And we have a pretty busy road nearby so I probably won’t try this any time soon but I am definitely going to do some research. Thanks for the insight!

 

[chooki]

In nature you say?

Okay, they don't sleep in the open and on a farm, but .. yeah ..

 

[WingItRanch]

In nature you say?

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Okay, they don't sleep in the open and on a farm, but .. yeah ..

Beautiful. You say they don't sleep in the open. Do you have a coop or do they sleep in the trees?

 

[chooki]

Beautiful. You say they don't sleep in the open. Do you have a coop or do they sleep in the trees?

They sleep in a coop which is locked at night, but are allowed to free range anywhere on the farm during the day when there are people.

There are many predators around, if they are out when no one is around, they will be gone in a day.