Developing My Own Breed Of Large Gamefowl For Free Range Survival (Junglefowl x Liege)

[Florida Bullfrog]

Do you sell / ship hatchling chicks? I'm in Oklahoma, and would very much like to have a few highly resilient chickens. This project is fascinating.

I haven’t in some time, except locally within Florida and occasionally I’ll trade genetics with like-minded breeders. I’ve never shipped chicks across state lines, only delivered locally.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

What dog fennel normally looks like at this time of year:

What it looks like after a flock of terrorfowl runs through it:

I got the flock locked back up with fresh water and food. We’ll see if any develop symptoms or not in the next couple of days. If all is well, I’ll turn them back out. Before I do, I’ll take the weed eater to that stand of dog fennel and green up the chicks good with lawn clippings and some over mature greens from my salad garden so they won’t feel the need to immediately eat the first green thing they see when turned out.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

My skin crawls just seeing pictures of that stuff. I think it proves that chickens do not smell very well. They can eat maggots from a rotting carcass and dog fennel.

Vultures and dogs also eat rotting carcasses. Cats eat cat food. Bear relish Florida palmetto bugs, which are a kind or giant cockroach that sprays like a skunk and smells similar. A lot of animals with confirmed strong senses of smell like stinky food. Even humans from some cultures like to eat rotten fish or putrid smelling fruits.

Which I like the smell of dog fennel. I have sprayed myself with it back before I knew how toxic it was.

 

[5 Points Wingfeather]

Vultures and dogs also eat rotting carcasses. Cats eat cat food. Bear relish Florida palmetto bugs, which are a kind or giant cockroach that sprays like a skunk and smells similar. A lot of animals with confirmed strong senses of smell like stinky food. Even humans from some cultures like to eat rotten fish or putrid smelling fruits.

Which I like the smell of dog fennel. I have sprayed myself with it back before I knew how toxic it was.

I haven’t thought about that stuff in a long while. I grew up in South Mississippi and it was all over the place. But I never see it where I live now even though it’s only 175 miles north of where I grew up.

 

[Red Mangrove]

Vultures and dogs also eat rotting carcasses. Cats eat cat food. Bear relish Florida palmetto bugs, which are a kind or giant cockroach that sprays like a skunk and smells similar. A lot of animals with confirmed strong senses of smell like stinky food. Even humans from some cultures like to eat rotten fish or putrid smelling fruits.

Which I like the smell of dog fennel. I have sprayed myself with it back before I knew how toxic it was.

When I read the comment about smells my mind instantly went to my poop eating dog. I know his sense of smell is 10,000 times better than mine

Maybe my sense of smell just isn't good enough to appreciate it

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

A turkey with special needs children.

You ended up being right. The turkey experiment is failing. She was down to 3 chicks yesterday. She is apparently walking a 2 acre circuit so much that they’re dropping away from the group from exhaustion one at a time. I have found two such chicks by themselves over 100 yards away from the turkey hen and clutch. Oh well.

The terrorfowl growouts are doing well. No negative effect I can see from the dog fennel. I turned them back out a couple of days ago. Free ranging them has cut their daily feed intake by half, and I may be too generous with how much I am giving them now.

 

[troyer]

You ended up being right. The turkey experiment is failing. She was down to 3 chicks yesterday. She is apparently walking a 2 acre circuit so much that they’re dropping away from the group from exhaustion one at a time. I have found two such chicks by themselves over 100 yards away from the turkey hen and clutch. Oh well.

The terrorfowl growouts are doing well. No negative effect I can see from the dog fennel. I turned them back out a couple of days ago. Free ranging them has cut their daily feed intake by half, and I may be too generous with how much I am giving them now.

If she ever hatches out chicks again you could put her in a pen until the chicks are big enough to keep up.
If the existing chicks with her survive, you'll know that they were of the stronger longer legged ones and might be the better ones of the bunch for the project that you've got going.

 

[Appalachian homestead]

You ended up being right. The turkey experiment is failing. She was down to 3 chicks yesterday. She is apparently walking a 2 acre circuit so much that they’re dropping away from the group from exhaustion one at a time. I have found two such chicks by themselves over 100 yards away from the turkey hen and clutch. Oh well.

The terrorfowl growouts are doing well. No negative effect I can see from the dog fennel. I turned them back out a couple of days ago. Free ranging them has cut their daily feed intake by half, and I may be too generous with how much I am giving them now.

If a few survive, I wonder what you'd end up with if you repeated it for several generations.

 

[Appalachian homestead]

I had trouble when I set some gamefowl eggs and some regular layer breed eggs under the same broody. The layer breed chicks were slower than the gamefowl, so the broody just focused her care on the gamefowl. One by one the slower chicks disappeared until there was only gamefowl left.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

If a few survive, I wonder what you'd end up with if you repeated it for several generations.

That’s a good question. I was hoping to see what happens when gamefowl imprint on a turkey. Will their vocalizations change? Their foraging and roosting habits? Will they roam further than chickens are inclined to go?

If one or two makes it, I would expect those survivors to be exceptionally strong individuals.

I could possibly have a higher success rate by locking the turkey up for the first couple of weeks until the chicks have developed more. But logistically that would likely require finding the turkey hen on her nest free range and moving her to a coop and hoping she stays broody after the move. Or tricking her and the bitties into a coop shortly after hatching. As she is a seasonal setter, I’d only get one crack at it a year.

At the same time, I have a new American game pullet free ranging a dozen Cracker x American crosses of approximately the same age or a hair older and she hasn’t lost one yet. Her methods of parenting the bitties are noticeably different than the turkey’s. As where the turkey runs a 2 acre circuit daily, the game hen hasn’t moved her clutch outside of my garden area, which is only .05 of an acre.

A more worth while experiment might be giving turkey eggs to a game hen. The biggest problem I’ve had with heritage turkeys is keeping them within the 2 acre safe zone my dogs are always up in. The turkeys roam my entire 40 acres and far beyond. To their detriment due to the bobcat. Seems like free range turkeys need to have the roaming instinct bred out of them so they keep to small areas like chickens. I would be curious to see if chicken-raised turkeys act differently. But I am not sure if I want to go further with turkeys anyhow. I want to know the answers as to how to get them free ranging and reproducing on their own like the gamefowl do, but I don’t want the stress on the flock of turkeys dominating the gamefowl. When I got rid of the guineas before I turned Azog out, the dynamics of the farmyard changed for the better.