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

[Perris]

They'll eat the broadleaf plants and the grass seeds first.

The grass itself is the last thing to go when I move the fence.

I've finally found an article on this that I read while ago; you might find it interesting
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...enefit-provided-by-this-everyday-green.67397/

 

[InterestingChickens]

We eat a lot of eggs. We are new to chickens.
We have a small flock of seven chickens that are soon to be egg layers.
Their run is 12x18, floor is currently grass, will add dye free mulch this fall when grass is gone.
My wife wants the healthiest eggs (and chickens)... She reads and watches info from the web about buying eggs from the store and what each term means and which is the "best."
Pasture raised chickens give great quality eggs is her starting point based on her research. Not going to debate that statement for this discussion.
She thinks that if they were free range we wouldn't need to feed them hardly any food and the eggs would be great quality... she thinks that is the implication from people talking about eggs from free range chickens. I tell her that they will still need access to feed.
I would rather build a larger (less secure) day time run instead of worrying about them destroying my garden, getting eaten by predators or going places they don't belong.
How large of a run would a dozen chickens need to be considered "pastured" for this discussion?

Diffrent breeds of chickens are better at foraging than others. Even so an individual bird can be better at foraging than birds from the same breed. What breeds do you have?

Even still they would need to be fed specially formulated chicken food. Please make the right choice and do not starve your birds.

 

[saysfaa]

There is more to pastures than what plants are growing in them. This is talking about deer food plots but the concept applies to other situations. This says what I mean more clearly than I can.

https://www.growingdeer.tv/ask/what-is-the-nutritional-value-of-ryegrass/

"...
Ryegrass can both grow and mature quickly. Once ryegrass goes from the blade (flat) stage to the stem (round) stage it decreases in nutritional quality... Wheat, especially forage wheat, tends to remain in the blade stage much longer...In addition forage wheat is often less expensive than a quality variety of ryegrass.

All forages are simply nutrient transfer agents. That’s to say if the nutrients aren’t in the ground they can’t be transferred to deer. Proper fertilization is just as important as forage variety."

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Diffrent breeds of chickens are better at foraging than others. Even so an individual bird can be better at foraging than birds from the same breed. What breeds do you have?

Even still they would need to be fed specially formulated chicken food. Please make the right choice and do not starve your birds.

Do they though?

 

[3KillerBs]

Do they though?

Unless the local environment is proven capable of supporting a year-round flock of feral chickens, yes.

Or unless they are being kept on a diversified farm with free access to other animals' pens/pastures where they can eat spilled feed, pick undigested grain and bugs out of the manure, forage among field crops, etc.



But production levels under those conditions should not be expected to even come close to modern norms.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Unless the local environment is proven capable of supporting a year-round flock of feral chickens, yes.

Or unless they are being kept on a diversified farm with free access to other animals' pens/pastures where they can eat spilled feed, pick undigested grain and bugs out of the manure, forage among field crops, etc.



But production levels under those conditions should not be expected to even come close to modern norms.

I agree that the habitat has to be correct, just as you can’t expect for a cow to be self sustaining in an urban back yard. I don’t think the bar is particularly high though. It doesn’t have to be a carefully planted field of the various ingredients found in commercial poultry food. It simply needs to be the same habitat a wild turkey can thrive in. Anything a wild turkey can do many breeds of still existent domestic chickens can do. Maybe even better than wild turkeys. Chickens are much more home bodies than turkeys are even in a pure state of nature as red junglefowl. Red junglefowl aren’t the circuit roamers wild turkeys are. They seem to be better at extracting maximum food from a minimal area.

Now as to production levels, I can only say that my layers (and that is specifically my laying breeds not my “survival” breeds) lay more free ranging than they do when I put them in coops and give them infinite feed. But I acknowledge that sometimes they may shut off because they’re not happy being cooped.

Do we even care about meeting factory production levels in home flocks? I would figure that the point of a home flock that is free ranging and being self-sustaining is to feed a family with minimal upkeep costs. If that is the goal, a free range flock feeding itself will do that aplenty.

 

[3KillerBs]

Do we even care about meeting factory production levels in home flocks? I would figure that the point of a home flock that is free ranging and being self-sustaining is to feed a family with minimal upkeep costs. If that is the goal, a free range flock feeding itself will do that aplenty.

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.

 

[NatJ]

Do they though?

In many cases, yes they need SOME amount of purchased chicken food.

For someone who is new to chickens, I would strongly recommend they provide free-choice chicken food at all times during the first two years or so. That is in addition to letting the chickens range/forage as much as the people want to allow.

I suggest 2 years because of seasonal variation and year-to-year variation. After that long, you've seen most of the options, and can more easily evaluate what is right for your conditions.

(No, that advice won't be right for everyone, but I think it will work for most people who are new to chickens.)

 

[Shadrach]

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.

 

[Badchickenpun]

Off the top of my head, I've planted:

White Clover
Yellow Clover
Crimson or Red Clover (I'd have to recheck which it was)
Flax
Hairy Vetch
Winter Peas
Red Sorrel
Millet (Green)
Amaranth
Buckwheat
Sorghum-Sudangrass Hybrid (some native saorghum volunteers gave me the idea)
Corn (died)
Sunflower (died)
Scribners Panic Grass
Little Bluestem
Bermuda grass
Bent grass
Perrenial Rye
some ornamental fountain grasses
an ornamental big bluestem (died)
Creeping Thyme
Fenugreek
Rape (never came up - but does well around here, so i did something wrong)
Several varieties of radish (still hanging on - barely - in a few spots as individual plants)
Rosemary (did great in TX, but all my plantings have died here - sometimes because the ducks stumbled thru them and broke all the stems)

Seasonally, I've planted an heirloom broccoli, carrots, zucchini, summer squash, various melons for them to eat.

Also have peaches, blueberries, some citrus, and a few varieties of grapes (not intended for the chickens, but...

Pretty certain I'm missing some things, and honestly, none of the grains have done well for me. Still a lot of effort taking out natives by hand to let the things I've seeded try and capture more of the pasture. But I'm making progress.

Oh, and because its not all practical, I put down some perrenial wildflower mix, of which the boneset, blanket flower, and black eyed susans have all done well. That **may** be the source of my toadflax as well.

Nice list. I am chewing on a list myself.
So I am thinking of making two extra runs, each about 18 x 18.

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.

Logs and other decaying matter might be just as crucial as the growing things?
Planning to till up the ground well and saturated with organic matter before I begin planting. I am sure a natural old wooded forest floor would be ideal, but not always available. That was the OP idea. A well mowed lawn may not give the same "free range" or "pastured" nutrients as those that free range in a woods or prairie... but then they won't have the same dangers, either, but that has nothing to do with their nutrition...
So in order to create a "slice" of a natural environment, I thought I would create a couple extra runs, and restricts access until everything has had a chance to grow, then allow them access a few hours each day to forage and enjoy. If one of these aux runs becomes to damaged, I can go in correct and give it time to regrow before allowing access again.
I would think that an well engineered (nutritive dense) space would be better than an empty lawn.