Combining free range feeding with crop production? Anyone here doing it?

[Kirkwooder]

I have always been interested in free range feeding a larger flock of birds on cropland. Do any of you do it, and if so can you please give me some background on your practices?

Thanks!

 

[mcdze]

off the top of my head generally chickens cant range on open land in full sun .. you could grow things to feed them for sure, i plan on growing a couple of rows of greens starting here in a couple of weeks, should supplement them until almost summer and well into 'bug season' and theyre good to go if they have enough range thats shaded to semi-shaded to root around on .. i'd say roughly an acre to 12 chickens can support them naturally pretty well and will reduce feed cost at least by half i would say .. they still need a free dinner so they hang around and you have good control of things ..

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Partially, but mostly "no". I'll explain. I have around 30 birds (not including recent hatchlings) which free range most of the day on about 4.5 of my acres, of which about 1.75 acres are cleared "pasture". I have tried to improve the pasture by seeding - rape seed, winter peas, various wheats, beets, radishes, melons, various squash, cilantro/coriander, and even fenugreek.

My damned dinosaurs ate most of the seed in the week-two weeks before those crops could sprout. When they weren't doing that, they ate the immature fruits of various melons and gourds. My broccoli they ate most of the sprouts, then ignored it till it started to make the flower head that we eat. Then they ate most of the leaves before it could ripen to a harvestable state. Same with my radishes.

Now, if I had had a LOT more of those crops that actually made it past the seed stage, the amount of damage my birds could have done in eating those crops would be lessened - but then I'd run risk of the birds really throwing off their diets by consuming copious amounts of some favorite veggie.

IF your birds could be kept out of the fields until after the crops were established, and the fields were big enough, then maybe - but that's not what most people think of when they think of free ranging. If you let your birds free range AROUND the fields, you could probably find some success there, but if they can enter the fields, expect damage to your crops, and watch your chickens close for dietary imbalances.

 

[NatJ]

I have always been interested in free range feeding a larger flock of birds on cropland. Do any of you do it, and if so can you please give me some background on your practices?

Thanks!

I've had chickens in an area with mulberry trees--they ate the fallen berries, I could get the ones on the tree. Any other fruit tree or nut tree might work equally well.

The rest of this is just speculation. I've had gardens, and chickens, but never large-scale cropland, and the chickens were rarely allowed in the garden.

With berry bushes (blackberry, raspberry, blueberry, currant, etc) I would think a few chickens in a large area would be fine, but many chickens with one bush would cause trouble. And of course you might need to fence them out at berry-picking time if you want any for yourself.

For most crops you would have to do some careful management of when the chickens were present.

So you could let them into any kind of field when there are no crops present (after harvest and before planting.) They could eat some weeds and bugs, and fertilize the soil a bit.

In a corn field, you could probably let the chickens in when the corn plants are tall and sturdy. Similar for any other crops that get big and sturdy.

For crops like lettuce where they would eat the whole plants, I would keep them out until the end of the season, when you have harvested as much as you want. Then you could let them in to eat what's left.

If you have access to fields of many different crops, that get planted and harvested at different times in the year, you might be able to shift the chickens around and always have them somewhere. But it would probably require a fair bit of planning, and it would really help to have something like pasture or orchard that chickens can use when the other crops are all at the "wrong" stage.

You can probably also let the chickens run in a pasture with cows (or sheep or goats), as long as it's not too crowded. Or put them in the pasture right after the cow move to another pasture, so the chickens can eat the maggots and worms and spread the cowpies around.

Of course you would still have to feed the chickens some purchased chicken food as well, unless you have VERY few chickens on a lot of land. Having a feeder available also helps you judge the amount they are eating while foraging: when they start eating more feed, you know the field is getting low on things for them to eat.

 

[Winter Creek Coop]

I have always been interested in free range feeding a larger flock of birds on cropland. Do any of you do it, and if so can you please give me some background on your practices?

Thanks!

Please define what larger means to you.

 

[Kirkwooder]

Please define what larger means to you.

I'm looking at production quantities, for meat birds or eggs. Hundreds of birds, possibly. Though would start on a much smaller scale.

I free range roughly 40-50 layers year round on my 3 acres and have access to 40+ acres of fallow field that gets brush hogged every year. I fence them out of our 1/3 acre garden. I have read some studies where people have grazed chickens in rotation with cattle, sheep, goats and other such critters, but I was more interested in raising poultry on crop land. Hay seems to make the most sense. It gets cut several times a year, chickens would eat it and the bugs that eat it and fertilize the soil at the same time. I know that where the chickens seem to gather in my lawn the grass grows faster than they can keep it mowed down. Actually making it so prolific that I need to mow those areas more often than the areas that they tend to avoid. I have turned them out in my sweet corn patch after the corn grows to be about twice their height, and they seem to keep some of the weeds down, but feed consumption is on par with hens in confined pasture. I purposely plant raspberries in my open top confined pasture, to help with protection from flying chicken eaters. The berries do very well, and yield about 50% more than the berries that are outside of the pasture. The hens don't really seem to go after them until they are completely ripe. By then I rotate them to a different pasture in order to harvest. But again feed consumption seems on par with pastured hens, maybe even higher. I assume due to the lack of grass under the shading berry bushes.

I believe that some crops would benefit from having the chickens patrolling constantly. Most hay crops would benefit from the nitrogen in the manure and the pest control offered from the roaming flock. Would the benefit outweigh the damage done by the birds feeding and roaming around trampling down the crop? How about crops like wheat, barley or oats. Could a flock possibly benefit a crop enough, in terms of pest/weed control and fertilization, as well as offset cost of commercial chemical usage for the same purpose to make it worthwhile doing?

 

[Winter Creek Coop]

I'm looking at production quantities, for meat birds or eggs. Hundreds of birds, possibly. Though would start on a much smaller scale.

I free range roughly 40-50 layers year round on my 3 acres and have access to 40+ acres of fallow field that gets brush hogged every year. I fence them out of our 1/3 acre garden. I have read some studies where people have grazed chickens in rotation with cattle, sheep, goats and other such critters, but I was more interested in raising poultry on crop land. Hay seems to make the most sense. It gets cut several times a year, chickens would eat it and the bugs that eat it and fertilize the soil at the same time. I know that where the chickens seem to gather in my lawn the grass grows faster than they can keep it mowed down. Actually making it so prolific that I need to mow those areas more often than the areas that they tend to avoid. I have turned them out in my sweet corn patch after the corn grows to be about twice their height, and they seem to keep some of the weeds down, but feed consumption is on par with hens in confined pasture. I purposely plant raspberries in my open top confined pasture, to help with protection from flying chicken eaters. The berries do very well, and yield about 50% more than the berries that are outside of the pasture. The hens don't really seem to go after them until they are completely ripe. By then I rotate them to a different pasture in order to harvest. But again feed consumption seems on par with pastured hens, maybe even higher. I assume due to the lack of grass under the shading berry bushes.

I believe that some crops would benefit from having the chickens patrolling constantly. Most hay crops would benefit from the nitrogen in the manure and the pest control offered from the roaming flock. Would the benefit outweigh the damage done by the birds feeding and roaming around trampling down the crop? How about crops like wheat, barley or oats. Could a flock possibly benefit a crop enough, in terms of pest/weed control and fertilization, as well as offset cost of commercial chemical usage for the same purpose to make it worthwhile doing?

Ok in terms of free range flock size I can’t speak to hundreds of birds. I have ran just under a hundred before counting meat birds and layers. They all had free range around the main coops with many acres to roam including a wood lot, but they stayed on less than five. I also trailered lots of meat chickens a few hundred yards away to a remote garden plot that I need bug help with. They basically saved my organic crop from grasshopper invasion. This was amhugh value crop if you catch my drift. My feed cost in the summer even with nearky a hundred birds was very minimal. I am not a good record keeper so I don’t know exact numbers. All summer they ate their fill daily of grasshoppers and whayever else they found. It can be done, but unless you are running electric poultry fence you may have predator issues. Our dogs do a great job of gaurding the chickens and the crop.

 

[Winter Creek Coop]

The active foraging slows your meat bird growth down some of you are running cornish crosses but I had absolutley zero leg or heart issues on the free range birds.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Beyond my experience, sorry - but if you should try it, I'd value your sharing of your experiences in that regard. My "pasture" is still being developed, as the birds help me fight with the clay soils to loosen them up some.

 

[Kirkwooder]

Dogs will likely be used for ground predators, the flying ones concern me as much or more that the furry ones do. We have a good population of hawks and eagles around us.