Debate on food, free range and egg quality...

[Florida Bullfrog]

Well, I'm working my way into egg sales so yes, I need production.

In re: Eastern Wild Turkeys in my state: https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/wild-turkey

"In the Southeast, wild turkeys require extensive forest lands that include nesting cover, brooding cover, roosting sites, and year-round foods. High quality turkey habitat contains a variety of vegetation types, including mature stands of mixed hardwoods with relatively open understory;"

"The home range of many wild turkeys may be 1,000 acres or more ..."

From: https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0913/ML091330576.pdf

"Birds may roam over only a few hundred acres during some seasons and in some habitat types, while annual ranges in different habitat types may cover several thousand acres."

Another source, https://www.southernstates.com/farm-store/articles/attracting-wild-turkeys says "High-quality turkey habitat will support one bird per 30 acres or a flock of 18 to 20 turkeys per square mile, according to North Carolina state forestry specialists."

I submit that very few people in the US east of the Mississippi own thousand-acre properties meeting those criteria on which they can range their chickens.

Yet I added a very important caveat in my post. Wild turkeys are roamers. Red junglefowl are not. In the wild Red Junglefowl may spend their entire adult lives within a few hundred yards. That’s why chickens are so good at staying in a barnyard. Its not because the instinct to roam was bred out of them. Its because they never had it to begin with. This is probably why feral chickens haven’t become widespread in the Southeast like wild hogs have. Its not that chickens don’t survive here in the wild. They do just fine. They simply never disperse.

Chickens don’t need thousands of acres to have a self sustaining flock. A single flock of a mature game rooster and 20 or so game hens are quite content to forage on 2 or 3 acres and lay as many eggs as a family can eat and as many hatching eggs as I can sell.

Now of you want to move thousands and thousands of eggs a year, then no that might not work for you just as you aren’t going to become a beef mogul on a 40 acre woods farm on what some half-wild cows that are browsing woods weeds like a billy goat. But you can definitely feed your family that way.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Lots of ideas about what to grow but what seems to be overlooked is how chickens forage. All the free rangers I've observed dig. The hens spread out and work their way over a patch of ground digging while the roosters stand guard.
After they've dug, that's when they graze, eating the most tender shoots of the vegitation that's available to them.
They have preferences and seem to know how much of what they need to balance their diet.

From what I've observed of free range chickens it's the bugs and shoots below the ground that provide the bulk of their diet.

The chickens digestive systems has evolved to enable them to eat a bit of this and a bit of that, store it in their crops and then massage it down to their gizzard where it's mashed and blended. Later, in the intestines, liver and kidneys the nutriants are extracted.

The interesting question is over what time scale can a chicken eat the vartiety of foods they do and provide their digestion with what is needed to make a complete balanced feed.
Bear in mind that some of the amino acids needed to make a complete protein the chicken can manufacture while others need to be ingested. In theory at least a chicken can eat an amnio acid deficient diet and still provide all the amino acids required to make a complete protein.

Terrible theory.

We know with absolute certainty that there are some amino acids chickens either can't produce on their own, or can't produce in sufficient quantity on their own - something they share in common with other animals. Chief among these are Methionine, Lysine, Threonine, Tryptophan. The first two are critical enough that they appear on US (but not EU or Canada) feed labels. Tryp levels needed are quite low, and easily met by the typical US soy/grain diet.

Other AAs (and even some vitamins) chickens can either manufacture on their own, or make from the critical AAs.

So while it is absolutely true that you can, in the main, completely ignore the majority of AAs making up a complete protein, there are some few where diet is the only avasilable source. and there are a few whose deficiencies can contribute to or exacerbate deficiencies in the critical ones. For instance, a chicken with a niacin deficiency and sufficient iron can produce niacin in its liver from an excess of tryptophan - but if Tryp levels are already low (or iron), that biological pathway won't work well (if at all). Chickens can also make Cystiene (indirectly) from Methionine, but can't convert an excess of Cysteine back into Methionine.

Now if you meant that its possible that a chicken can eat a diet low in certain specific amino acids - the ones that no one pays attention to, don't appear on feed labels, and have only limited research regarding - and still have the complete proteins that they need because they produce those AAs on their own, yes that's true. Functionally useless, but true.

Recommend focusing limited resources on the things we know they can't do without, rather than directing any thought at all to the ones they produce quite naturally on their own.

 

[Shadrach]

Terrible theory.

We know with absolute certainty that there are some amino acids chickens either can't produce on their own, or can't produce in sufficient quantity on their own - something they share in common with other animals. Chief among these are Methionine, Lysine, Threonine, Tryptophan. The first two are critical enough that they appear on US (but not EU or Canada) feed labels. Tryp levels needed are quite low, and easily met by the typical US soy/grain diet.

Other AAs (and even some vitamins) chickens can either manufacture on their own, or make from the critical AAs.

So while it is absolutely true that you can, in the main, completely ignore the majority of AAs making up a complete protein, there are some few where diet is the only avasilable source. and there are a few whose deficiencies can contribute to or exacerbate deficiencies in the critical ones. For instance, a chicken with a niacin deficiency and sufficient iron can produce niacin in its liver from an excess of tryptophan - but if Tryp levels are already low (or iron), that biological pathway won't work well (if at all). Chickens can also make Cystiene (indirectly) from Methionine, but can't convert an excess of Cysteine back into Methionine.

Now if you meant that its possible that a chicken can eat a diet low in certain specific amino acids - the ones that no one pays attention to, don't appear on feed labels, and have only limited research regarding - and still have the complete proteins that they need because they produce those AAs on their own, yes that's true. Functionally useless, but true.

Recommend focusing limited resources on the things we know they can't do without, rather than directing any thought at all to the ones they produce quite naturally on their own.

I don't know which post you read...
I have a suggestion for you.
Instead of reading stuff on the internet go outside and look at what your chickens actually do.

Let me see if I can straighten you out.
It's not a theory. Lets start there. Chickens have survived for thousands of years without commercial feed.

Now, if you wanted to write that modern high production chickens are unlikely to fare well with out commercial feed you would have a point. But you didn't write that.
But then again no one who knows anything about chickens would expect hatchery type high productions chickens to survive on forage alone, would they.
Only an idiot would attempt such an experiment with the standard hatchery chickens. Wouldn't you agree?

Bear in mind that some of the amino acids needed to make a complete protein the chicken can manufacture while others need to be ingested. In theory at least a chicken can eat an amnio acid deficient diet and still provide all the amino acids required to make a complete protein.

I think I covered the rest in the paragraph above. If this wasn't the case there would be no chickens now would there.

 

[Krugerrand]

We know with absolute certainty that there are some amino acids chickens either can't produce on their own, or can't produce in sufficient quantity on their own - something they share in common with other animals. Chief among these are Methionine, Lysine, Threonine, Tryptophan. The first two are critical enough that they appear on US (but not EU or Canada) feed labels. Tryp levels needed are quite low, and easily met by the typical US soy/grain diet.

Would you expect that the jungle fowl got their Methionine / Lysine from eating small animals? Perhaps a key to successful foraging would be an abundance of small animals and birds able to get them. (still problematic for most people/locations)

 

[3KillerBs]

But then again no one who knows anything about chickens would expect hatchery type high productions chickens to survive on forage alone, would they.
Only an idiot would attempt such an experiment with the standard hatchery chickens. Wouldn't you agree?

Not an idiot -- but a newbie who has no real knowledge and a lot of romantic ideas about "grandma's chickens on the farm".

OR a person who has read about free-ranging in superficial, feel-good articles and has no idea of the limitations of the concept or about the fact that only certain chicken breeds are capable of thriving under those conditions, that certain environments can't support them at certain times of year, or even that there are such fundamental differences between chicken breeds.

"Homesteading" books, websites, YouTube channels, etc. are often long on romanticism and short on realistic limitations and tradeoffs. One book we have actually said that the way they took a rest-day break from all the hard work of living off their land (plus their book royalties and article payments), and producing/processing all their food from scratch was "we just don't eat that day," -- not a solution that most people would find practical.

Ignorance =/= idiocy.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I don't know which post you read...
I have a suggestion for you.
Instead of reading stuff on the internet go outside and look at what your chickens actually do.

Let me see if I can straighten you out.
It's not a theory. Lets start there. Chickens have survived for thousands of years without commercial feed.

Now, if you wanted to write that modern high production chickens are unlikely to fare well with out commercial feed you would have a point. But you didn't write that.
But then again no one who knows anything about chickens would expect hatchery type high productions chickens to survive on forage alone, would they.
Only an idiot would attempt such an experiment with the standard hatchery chickens. Wouldn't you agree?


I think I covered the rest in the paragraph above. If this wasn't the case there would be no chickens now would there.

You are arguing a straw man, and are incorrect on the fcsts as well.

DEFINITIONALLY, Essential (or Critical) Amino Acids are ones which the body can't produce. Its a Scientific FACT. The only source is the diet. As I said.

We, Apes, Bears, Badgers, Cats, Dogs, Chickens, and every other vertebrate share that fact in common.

If they don't get it in the diet, they can't make a complete protein. Simple as that.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK557845/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4935284/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3287585/

etc.

I said nothing about the need for commercial feed (in this post), only pointed out that two of the essentials are considered important enough to appear on our feed labels (though not elsewhere) and the others were generally ignored (with an offering as to why they are generally ignored).

Now it may be that certain flocks, under certain conditions, with certain forage can meet their nutritional needs solely from the environment - but they aren't making those essential AAs on their own, they are eating them. If they don't get enough, they will suffer for it. Simple fact - they lack the ability to create them biologically.

If we are to discuss chicken nutrition, and their needs for optimum production, I think it best to dispel ignorance and magical thinking, focus our efforts on the most critical needs. Or accept that by revelling in personal ignorance and the hope that they will do fine on their own, we cast their lot upon the vagaries of fate - most likely resulting in smaller, less productive, less robust birds. The difference between living, and thriving.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Would you expect that the jungle fowl got their Methionine / Lysine from eating small animals? Perhaps a key to successful foraging would be an abundance of small animals and birds able to get them. (still problematic for most people/locations)

Mine eat lizards, frogs, toads (not sure how given that toads are poisonous, mice, snakes, and whatever else they find.

Now I live in the deep woods and the argument can be made that perhaps I have a special wild habitat that allows them to find all they need. Yet within 20 minutes of me is a feral flock in the heart of a small city that’s been established for at least several decades. They find what they need foraging through the low-income neighborhood that is their home. The flock is several hundred strong. They have a mix of gamefowl and modern domestic traits.

I am aware of a deep woods feral flock in the Osceola National Forest about 30 minutes from me. Their traits are overwhelmingly bankivoid gamefowl.

 

[Shadrach]

Yet I added a very important caveat in my post. Wild turkeys are roamers. Red junglefowl are not. In the wild Red Junglefowl may spend their entire adult lives within a few hundred yards. That’s why chickens are so good at staying in a barnyard. Its not because the instinct to roam was bred out of them. Its because they never had it to begin with. This is probably why feral chickens haven’t become widespread in the Southeast like wild hogs have. Its not that chickens don’t survive here in the wild. They do just fine. They simply never disperse.

Chickens don’t need thousands of acres to have a self sustaining flock. A single flock of a mature game rooster and 20 or so game hens are quite content to forage on 2 or 3 acres and lay as many eggs as a family can eat and as many hatching eggs as I can sell.

Now of you want to move thousands and thousands of eggs a year, then no that might not work for you just as you aren’t going to become a beef mogul on a 40 acre woods farm on what some half-wild cows that are browsing woods weeds like a billy goat. But you can definitely feed your family that way.

This is an excellent post and goes someway to illustrate just how important the type of chicken is when one is considering free ranging with minimum additional feed.
It doesn't matter how many acres you have, chickens tend to establish territories and tend to stick to them. When tribe density increases, or forage opportunities decrease they move on to another territory and maintain the same area of land.
I found about an acre per tribe was usual. Of course one doesn't expect the same amount of eggs as the production breeds lay but then one doesn't attempt to enforce such living conditions on such breeds.

 

[3KillerBs]

Yet within 20 minutes of me is a feral flock in the heart of a small city that’s been established for at least several decades. They find what they need foraging through the low-income neighborhood that is their home.

In an urban environment they undoubtedly have an abundant supply of human garbage, pet food from animals fed outside, seed from birdfeeders, rodents, roaches, etc.

In a way, that would hearken back to the diversified farm situation where birds weren't specifically fed, but were fed on farm waste beyond what the natural environment would have provided.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

This is an excellent post and goes someway to illustrate just how important the type of chicken is when one is considering free ranging with minimum additional feed.
It doesn't matter how many acres you have, chickens tend to establish territories and tend to stick to them. When tribe density increases, or forage opportunities decrease they move on to another territory and maintain the same area of land.
I found about an acre per tribe was usual. Of course one doesn't expect the same amount of eggs as the production breeds lay but then one doesn't attempt to enforce such living conditions on such breeds.

There seems to be a false dichotomy in the internet chicken and homesteading communities that says the choices are either wild junglefowl which are untamable and lay 20 eggs a year or fat production layers that provide 300 eggs a year but need a Fort Knox coop and commercial feed.

There are plenty of breeds in the middle that retain the alertness and foraging ability of junglefowl but with high enough production traits to make them useful to a family farm.

I think its time for a revolution in the backyard chicken community that returns a lot of the lost knowledge that our great grandparents knew about free ranging and the breeds that are capable of it. Which for most of us, means relearning what was once conventional wisdom about gamefowl.