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

[Florida Bullfrog]

I said THRIVE. Not live. There is a very significant difference. I actually read a lot of the thirds (and developing world) research on poultry nutrition to see what other ingredients are out there, to get ideas for things to try out.

But since you bring up the third world, I'll offer an illustration which may help you distinguish betyween my use of live and thrive.

The people of North Korea and South Korea are genetically, essentially one people. They've only been divided politically in the modern era. Obviously, man has lived there for thousands of years. LIVED. To the people of the still third world North Korea, men their look normal, natural, more or less as they have for thousands, or perhaps tens of thousands of years - living a lifestyle not much changed from their ancient forebearers.

When a North Korean male crosses the border and is compared with his South Korean counterpart, benefiting from greatly improvced diet, its obvious that the South Korean man is, comparatively, THRIVE-ing. He's pounds heavier, inches taller, has a generally more robust immune system - even before accounting for improvements in modern medicine.

Now that comparison becomes increasingly less far as the South Korean populace increasingly intermingles with more diverse genetic populations - but the studies and observations first noting the significant visual differences in size, weight, and general health trace back to the 70s and 80s.

But what does it mean to thrive in specific relation to chickens? Humans living hand-to-mouth may be having a less-than-happy life depending on the circumstances, culture, and wishes and personality of the individuals. If we take the human analogy to the next step, fat coop chickens would be the equivalent of humans in a razor wire prison being fed nice food but unable to leave. Is that thriving? Supposed calamity hits the South Koreans so that their nice food and healthcare vanishes. Wouldn’t then the rugged North Koreans be better positioned to survive the collapse? I don’t think a human analogy works here, but to the extent we’re going to use it I would think the poor North Koreans in the analogy are a tougher people than the rich South Koreans.

I would think that as far as chickens are concerned, being healthy through their prime years and reproducing at a rate faster than predators and disease can take them is thriving. If we define “thriving” to be equivalent of relatively rich human living conditions in the first world, then no wild animal really thrives in a state of nature.

 

[Shadrach]

I have to say, I find these conversations fascinating. There's no way my 1/2 acre lot in SW PA could support birds without my feeding them. The kids would be extremely sad if we lost one to a predator. So, they only get out of their secure run occasion.ally throughout the week.

One thing I don't understand on the full-forage approach is how does one harvest? The point of having chickens is typicall eggs and or meat. Toss in some personal enjoyment in there. But, what keeps the chickens around to get the eggs/meat if they don't come back for food? Is it the coop? I would think that would only be so much of a draw.

Free range chickens ime don't range far unless the population density pushes them out to thhe perimeters of where they were hatched and raised.
Table scraps, water and housing in most case keep them within a reasonable range.
Harvesting eggs can be a problem because one has to go and find the nests. After a while one gets to know where the chickens go and what are likely nest sites.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I have to say, I find these conversations fascinating. There's no way my 1/2 acre lot in SW PA could support birds without my feeding them. The kids would be extremely sad if we lost one to a predator. So, they only get out of their secure run occasion.ally throughout the week.

One thing I don't understand on the full-forage approach is how does one harvest? The point of having chickens is typicall eggs and or meat. Toss in some personal enjoyment in there. But, what keeps the chickens around to get the eggs/meat if they don't come back for food? Is it the coop? I would think that would only be so much of a draw.

Harvesting of eggs on my farm is accomplished by nailing nest boxes about chest high under open sheds and on fence posts around the farm. The game hens prefer the scattered nest boxes.

I harvest meat by either shooting the birds during the daytime with a high powered pellet gun or by catching them off the roost at night. If they’re high up a tree I can induce them to step onto a tall wooden pole by pushing the poll under their legs. I then lower them down and grab them. My grandmother hunted her wild game chickens with a .22 rifle and harvested around 30 a month to eat.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

The historical chickenkeeping book in this thread: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/poultry-for-the-farm-and-home.1443907/ Poultry for the Farm and Home, was written in 1921 with the goal of teaching farmers how to get a then-profitable 100 eggs per hen per year -- from LEGHORNS.

The Brahma I sold last night to an ornamental lawn flock home was the worst layer in my flock and she did better than that.

I don't think that most people today would find the low productivity of a century ago acceptable -- especially since the eggs produced would be small-to-medium when all modern recipes assume a Large egg (2oz or 60g).

The game chicken thing is all well and good for situations where it applies. Assuming you have the space to house them, the land to range them on, the climate and ecology to provide for them (my own area is described as an "impoverished" ecosystem based on poor soils and resulting lack of species diversity), and the willingness to hunt nests when they decide not to accept the housing provided.

Likewise the third world landraces, where *some* supplemental protein in people's diets at minimal or no cost beats *no* supplemental protein at all.

Even the heritage-type Dual Purpose breeds were developed because many people wanted more out of their chickens than that.

It's not wrong, but it's got limited applicability, at least in the modern west and, most particularly, where the land available ranges from an urban backyard to a small hobby farm/homestead of a few acres to a few tens of acres.

I agree its of limited application to urban settings, but I don’t believe its unrealistic at all for people on rural acreage. I don’t have first hand experience outside of the deep South, but I do know throughout the Southeast it was normal to free range gamefowl on farms smaller than 10 acres. I would myself say 2-3 good acres would be the minimum to have a self-sustaining game flock that has room to grow. Poor people fed their families that way.

Here’s why I think this discussion is important and why the modern conventional wisdom needs to be challenged. Did you all know the Greeks and Romans developed fat layer chickens like we have that required coops and bought feed? Go read Cato the Elder and Columella among others. In the BC and early AD era they were writing books about chicken keeping with coops that sound like any modern book on the subject. Their coop birds were as helpless as ours. Guess what happened when Rome’s global economy fell? Those coop birds died out for the most part, with a few of those Greek and Roman breeds reverting to a wild bankivoid state. Only the gamefowl and those reverted, semi-feral, chickens survived the middle ages. Our modern coop breeds were derived from those tough survivors since the late 1700s.

If you believe that you’ll always have access to cheap feed from the feed store, then my point is moot to you. If however you believe as I do that all it will take is another Great Depression or World War to make the keeping of coop chickens untenable, then it matters if chickens can take care of themselves.

 

[Shadrach]

I also used a long pole with a T piece on the end. If you apply pressure to the back of a chickens leg between the ankle and knee it's an involuntary action to step back and grasp whatever is behind them.

 

[Shadrach]

I agree its of limited application to urban settings, but I don’t believe its unrealistic at all for people on rural acreage. I don’t have first hand experience outside of the deep South, but I do know throughout the Southeast it was normal to free range gamefowl on farms smaller than 10 acres. I would myself say 2-3 good acres would be the minimum to have a self-sustaining game flock that has room to grow. Poor people fed their families that way.

Here’s why I think this discussion is important and why the modern conventional wisdom needs to be challenged. Did you all know the Greeks and Romans developed fat layer chickens like we have that required coops and bought feed? Go read Cato the Elder and Columella among others. In the BC and early AD era they were writing books about chicken keeping with coops that sound like any modern book on the subject. Their coop birds were as helpless as ours. Guess what happened when Rome’s global economy fell? Those coop birds died out for the most part, with a few of those Greek and Roman breeds reverting to a wild bankivoid state. Only the gamefowl and those reverted, semi-feral, chickens survived the middle ages. Our modern coop breeds were derived from those tough survivors since the late 1700s.

If you believe that you’ll always have access to cheap feed from the feed store, then my point is moot to you. If however you believe as I do that all it will take is another Great Depression or World War to make the keeping of coop chickens untenable, then it matters if chickens can take care of themselves.

My view is based more around what is likely to be good for the chicken as a species in the long term and hatchery raised birds kept in cages is most defintely not.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I also used a long pole with a T piece on the end. If you apply pressure to the back of a chickens leg between the ankle and knee it's an involuntary action to step back and grasp whatever is behind them.

I don’t use a t-piece but I bet it works better than my straight poll.

 

[Badchickenpun]

I have to say, I find these conversations fascinating. There's no way my 1/2 acre lot in SW PA could support birds without my feeding them. The kids would be extremely sad if we lost one to a predator. So, they only get out of their secure run occasion.ally throughout the week.

One thing I don't understand on the full-forage approach is how does one harvest? The point of having chickens is typicall eggs and or meat. Toss in some personal enjoyment in there. But, what keeps the chickens around to get the eggs/meat if they don't come back for food? Is it the coop? I would think that would only be so much of a draw.

I think the discussion online, in general gets more confused when you aren't given proper context for the intent of the chicken keeper and the desired output / expectations of the birds.
For me...
1. I want egg production, but I want eggs that are healthy for us to eat and chickens that can produce some for years. I would rather have fewer healthier eggs, than to have massive quantities of lesser nutritious ones. I don't want a flock of unproductive birds in their later years because my set up made them produce at high levels off season.
2. I want my birds to be safe and healthy, if it requires a little terra-forming to create special spaces for them to forage, so be it.

Some try to free range to save money, some free range because they have birds as pets, not so much as utility. I think, in many cases, even the free range birds have a safe space at night. The may run free all day, but them return to a fort knox at night because that is when most of the predators and out and chicken night time vision sucks.
I think before pressing an opinion for the correct way to raise chickens... one should establish expectations of egg production and/or egg quality, or meat, or pets, or etc.
These discussions may be parallel argument in some cases.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

But what does it mean to thrive in specific relation to chickens? Humans living hand-to-mouth may be having a less-than-happy life depending on the circumstances, culture, and wishes and personality of the individuals. If we take the human analogy to the next step, fat coop chickens would be the equivalent of humans in a razor wire prison being fed nice food but unable to leave. Is that thriving? Supposed calamity hits the South Koreans so that their nice food and healthcare vanishes. Wouldn’t then the rugged North Koreans be better positioned to survive the collapse? I don’t think a human analogy works here, but to the extent we’re going to use it I would think the poor North Koreans in the analogy are a tougher people than the rich South Koreans.

I would think that as far as chickens are concerned, being healthy through their prime years and reproducing at a rate faster than predators and disease can take them is thriving. If we define “thriving” to be equivalent of relatively rich human living conditions in the first world, then no wild animal really thrives in a state of nature.

I advise against high fat diets, too. They are merely unhealthy in a different way.

While there are no guarantees - except that no one gets out alive - the consistent trend from epidemiology studies is that nutritionally challenged populations fare more poorly, on average, in the face of disease and rapid environmental changes.

The noble savage has a lot of romance to it, but the reality is far uglier.

Sorry for short post - raining cats and dogs, lost my satellite internet.

 

[NatJ]

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.

If a diet provides everything the chicken needs, why would you ever call that diet "deficient"?

It may be providing things in a different form than some people would expect, but if the right nutrients are there in some form (either directly usable, or in a form the chicken can convert to a usable form), then the diet is NOT deficient.