Chickens in nature

[Skyeknight]

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

How do you manage your roosters? Do you keep back a few breeding roosters each year and then eat those later or keep them for multiple years? How many roosters do you use for breeding? What are you selecting towards specifically?

 

[Chicken_Obsesser]

In nature you say?

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

What's that thing in the middle picture???

 

[Chicken_Obsesser]

What's that thing in the middle picture???

Beautiful property as well.

 

[No Coop No Problem]

In nature you say?

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

Beautiful pictures and a gorgeous old tree

How do you manage your roosters? Do you keep back a few breeding roosters each year and then eat those later or keep them for multiple years? How many roosters do you use for breeding? What are you selecting towards specifically?

Keeping chickens freely like this is mostly a good thing, but one of the bad aspects is that my flock roosts pretty much directly next to my house and humans bred chickens to be very loud for some reason. I've had pure red junglefowl before and it's remarkable how quiet they are. The females move around like silent ninjas and the males crow rarely, and when do they crow it's quiet (relative to most chicken breeds) and musical sounding. Somehow humans turned these graceful creatures into loud screaming honking things

The plan for the roosters is to keep the quietest and best behaved of them all, in the maximum number that can keep the peace. I'll keep them until they're surpassed in quality by new males, be that for months or years. My last rooster was very nicely behaved and quiet until I made the mistake (made many of them over the years) of trying to add on another rooster just before breeding season this year. The new guy was absolutely horrible and I instantly realized that I shouldn't have brought him here. Unfortunately this changed my broodcocks behavior dramatically and he never returned to normal, even after the new guy was removed. After a couple of weeks of trying to work with him we eventually processed him

The thought occurred to me the other day that I should have started with a junglefowl rooster over some orpington hens, as this may have been the fastest path to tough, quiet chickens with decent production. However I'm going to keep moving forward with what I have already, selecting the quietest roosters and my best behaved hens for future hatches, so that one day I don't have animals screaming into my bedroom windows

Truly I feel like humanity made a terrible error making them as loud as they are

 

[Pbccmom]

I would love to let my chickens run free. I lost 2 in a raccoon attack last year. They roam all day. They go I to the coop at night and I lock them in. I have 1.5 acres and lots of hiding places

 

[Shadrach]

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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

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

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

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

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

I'm a bit surprised you didn't get on with the Fayoumies. What was it that you didn't like about them?

 

[chooki]

What's that thing in the middle picture???

Giant wood moth I think. Like its name implies, it's gigantic.

It was hiding amongst grass and leaves, and kind of looked like the head of a snake:

 

[chooki]

These are not new, I have taken these pictures 1-2 years ago:

 

[Birdslave]

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

Cool pictures. I'm sure they are all very quick to evade rats, and whatever else that tries to get them. They ARE smart birds, as we all know.
Was that an aquatic labra-chicken ? I think I had one of them once. Lol.

 

[No Coop No Problem]

I'm a bit surprised you didn't get on with the Fayoumies. What was it that you didn't like about them?

I was surprised and disappointed myself. Two years ago when someone local was selling a quad of them I was excited for the opportunity and the plan was to breed them to a locally camouflaging color, but otherwise keep them exactly as Fayoumi. However I could make a laundry list of reasons why they didn't work here

• They're extremely flighty, to the extent they won't get within 30 feet of a human outside. If they go somewhere to lay eggs and then see me within 10 feet they'll scream extremely loud and explode away at the speed of light. Not even Red Junglefowl are this flighty
• Female Fayoumi hide their eggs always
• Female Fayoumi are the only chickens I've ever had that regularly break and eat their own eggs. It was months before I got a single egg from them because they would eat them all, and even the eggs of other chickens
• The females are extremely cruel. They're the only breed I've ever encountered that bite, grab, and rip at the flesh of other chickens. They genuinely try to hurt other chickens and would go out of their way to cause harm to others
• Sometimes the females when tree roosting would begin screaming extremely loud in their raspy voices, and they wouldn't stop for 30+ minutes. This would actually rile up my normally peaceful flock until the entire flock is screaming frantically
• All of the females died to predation within 6 months (thank God), probably due to their color not matching the forest
• All Fayoumi offspring and hybrid offspring hit sexual maturity around two weeks of age, then they began to fight, scream and attempt forcibly mating with anything they can. Often they attempt to violently force themselves on their own adoptive mother (see pic)
  
• Developing cockerels express cruelty similar to female Fayoumi, and will even stomp on newborn chicks (for which they were instantly culled)
• The sole mature Fayoumi male on the other hand seemed to have a noble soul and was tirelessly working to protect my entire flock. No complaints about him, though I have no doubt he was a hellion in his own youth

In general Egyptian Fayoumi seem to be all of the worst traits of chickens bundled together. I have no idea how or why people choose to work with these things. They belong left alone in the Egyptian wilderness

Ironically I think a small amount of their blood remains here and it resembles aesthetically the original hope I naively had for the Fayoumi. There are a small number of black chicks right now with golden-brown lacing in the pattern of Fayoumi. Very beautiful looking and I've seen them trying to mate at very young ages already. Hopefully their behavior doesn't grow anymore Fayoumi like

I'll have to catch one sometime and post a picture