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

[raingarden]

Survival of our quasi-feral chicks are like that. 25-30%. If they are captured and penned up with the hen survival is more like 80-90%. I'm still trying to sort out how much of the loss is predation and how much disease, or how much the two are intertwined.

Then after being weaned, most young-of-the-year are driven away so the flock size remains somewhat stable. I feel like they are adjusting their numbers to accomodate the forage base or carrying capacity.

When an adult is butchered it feels like a loss at first but it is really just opening up a slot for a new poulet.

 

[annaschicken01]

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?

If she is looking for a good chicken feed to feed on the side I recommend Dumor 16% Layer Feed. I find the yolks are solid, and the shells are hard. I have tried other feeds and I don't get the same results. We also let our chickens free range, we lock them up in the chicken coop at night. I lost all of my french cuckoo maran hens to preditors last year which is why we started doing that.

 

[Shadrach]

Survival of our quasi-feral chicks are like that. 25-30%. If they are captured and penned up with the hen survival is more like 80-90%. I'm still trying to sort out how much of the loss is predation and how much disease, or how much the two are intertwined.

Then after being weaned, most young-of-the-year are driven away so the flock size remains somewhat stable. I feel like they are adjusting their numbers to accomodate the forage base or carrying capacity.

When an adult is butchered it feels like a loss at first but it is really just opening up a slot for a new poulet.

Human predation (we ate some) and other predators accounted for the deaths in Catalonia. The Goshawk killed most.

Then after being weaned, most young-of-the-year are driven away so the flock size remains somewhat stable. I feel like they are adjusting their numbers to accomodate the forage base or carrying capacity.

How many of the young who don't stay with the parents form new tribes do you think?
I ended up with new tribes but I controled the breeding quantity by either not letting them sit and hatch, or limiting the amount of eggs the broodies sat on.
Predation managed the rest. The total number of chickens, both sexes, used to fluctuate between 20 and 30 spread over 3 or 4 tribes.

 

[raingarden]

How many of the young who don't stay with the parents form new tribes do you think?

That's what I've always wanted to know.

A few can form a new group up next to the highway where the main flock do not go. Other than that, they would have to move to someone else's property.

I've always wanted to be able to walk through everybody's property to map the chicken flocks. But, a crazy old chicken guy walking through your yard might not go over to well.

From the highway, you can see flocks scattered along. Maybe every quarter mile or so. Some people hate them, some people feed them, some people eat them.

We're less than three acres and not fenced. The chickens go where they want. But, they stay close enough to home to hear the top being removed from the metal feed can.

 

[Perris]

they stay close enough to home to hear the top being removed from the metal feed can

mine have excellent hearing for food-related noises too!

 

[Craigboy53]

That sized run will become dirt soon enough. Chickens scratch and will kill the plants in enclosed runs of any reasonable size. Generally, pastured chickens supplement their feed with plants/bugs/etc. It definitely does help the quality of the eggs.

The feed is a good base as it is generally good about providing balanced nutrition to make up for any imbalances in the pasture food. Also, I can tell you from personal experience that you are in a location where the feed will be 90% of their food in the winter.

FYI- Consider using dead leaves instead of wood mulch. Just collect them in the fall and store in bags. They are much easier on chicken feet and they love digging around in it and it gets broken down (along with chicken poo) into an excellent compost you can use in the spring.

I second the suggestion about using leaves. In the fall, we have loads of leaves, which I vacuum mulch into garbage bags. Mulching helps them break down more quickly. These are left in the sun, to start breaking down, and then are used in the roost, and the run. The shredded leaves absorb more chicken droppings than wood shavings or straw (which take forever to compost). When I clean out the run and roost, the leaf/manure mixture goes to the compost pile, where it breaks down very quickly. The chickens love digging in the leaves for all the bugs that tend to live in them. The best part….leaves are free!

 

[MimiRatt]

FYI- Consider using dead leaves instead of wood mulch. Just collect them in the fall and store in bags. They are much easier on chicken feet and they love digging around in it and it gets broken down (along with chicken poo) into an excellent compost you can use in the spring.

I agree with this so much, but I didn’t want to say anything at first. I’m kinda new to raising as well. Mulch made from wood is pointy and splintery, and unless you make it yourself it usually has chemicals on it that are supposed to be helpful for keeping weeds away. Chicken feet just need a cut or splinter in their foot to allow bacteria in and cause bumble foot. That’s like a staph infection. If you feel the need to put something down, use fine wood chips you can get for bedding, but you shouldn’t have to. The grass will get scratched up, eaten, and die with chickens soon enough.

 

[Folly's place]

This has been a very interesting thread, thanks to all who have contributed to it!
About longevity: almost all hatcheries and private breeders use birds under two years of age only. This does not select for birds who will live longer, so many hens are dying by age three, and roosters aren't fertile as they get older either.
Hatching eggs from older healthy birds will pay off to improve long life in the flock. My oldest hens have been ten, @troyer has Cubalayas, a game type chicken, and has had teen aged productive hens.
After finding that we now have poison hemlock all over the place, beware!!! Look it up, and safely remove it if found. We've been pulling flowering second year plants, and spraying broad leaf weedkiller on plots of first year plants. Definitely don't want our critters eating any part of it!
Free ranging is great, except for the days when it isn't. We lost over twenty birds in about an hour a few years ago, to a dog. Hawks take one at a time, much less of a threat. Some birds learn and are more alert, especially after a bad event, so survivors do better next time. That's not what a small pet flock owner wants!
I'm happy to provide a balanced feed, and then whatever the flock finds out there is a bonus.
Mary

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

In my survival flock I value the old hens because they lay bigger eggs and have the world-wise experience. They make for being better mommas and raising stronger chicks. And they’ve generally passed the test of time. So I do not cull for age alone. I offset the lower egg numbers an individual older hen produces by having more of them.

I never thought to weigh eggs before. I did so last night. My free-rangers across various large breeds of both layers and full sized games make eggs that weigh 1.8-1.9 oz a piece. The little Cracker eggs weigh 1.2 oz. Tonight I will compare some coop-grain fed, American game bantam eggs to free range Cracker eggs. I’ll compare eggs that eyeball to substantially same dimensions to see of there is a difference in weight.

I forgot to add that I weighed free-range Cracker vs. cooped American game bantam eggs of roughly the same dimensions and there was no appreciable difference in weight between the free rangers and the coop birds. They're all between 1.1 and 1.2 oz. I don't hold that out as proving much if anything towards my point about free-range productivity. I would only consider it significant if there was a noticeable difference between the weights between the two groups in either direction, such as if free rangers were significantly lighter or heavier. I just offer it as an interesting observation.

 

[TooCheep]

I forgot to add that I weighed free-range Cracker vs. cooped American game bantam eggs of roughly the same dimensions and there was no appreciable difference in weight between the free rangers and the coop birds. They're all between 1.1 and 1.2 oz. I don't hold that out as proving much if anything towards my point about free-range productivity. I would only consider it significant if there was a noticeable difference between the weights between the two groups in either direction, such as if free rangers were significantly lighter or heavier. I just offer it as an interesting observation.

Not sure that egg size is a significant measurement, but at least you appear to have some evidence that it can be ruled it out as a possible benefit of free ranging. What would definitely be good measurements are analysis of the nutrients in the yolk (harder for the average person to do) and successful hatch rate (would be an interesting comparison).