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

[Appalachian homestead]

A few years ago my boss mowed over a turkey nest while mowing hay. I took the unbroken eggs and put them under a broody chicken hen. They had a little trouble communicating, but she raised them ok. They were extremely flighty but roosted in the trees right outside the coop. They foraged with the chickens during the day. The two that survived to adulthood were hens. They stuck around until breeding season the following spring, then joined the wild turkeys.

 

[Red Mangrove]

I'm 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.

I sold all of my goats recently because after doing the math I figured out they increased consumption here rather than production

Production is the heart of farming. To be able to produce excess calories from nature

My chickens on the other hand are gold and they're at their most efficient the less I mess with them. God already perfected the chicken when He made RJF millennia ago. Now here in 2032 I either degrade the RJF so that it's more useful for my purposes, or I attempt to repair the dysgenic birds that man has created so they survive better

Somewhere on this spectrum is the ideal bird for free-range farming. Right now I have an Indio Gigante cock breeding my AGF and RJF so we'll see how that turns out

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Random pics of the terrorfowl chicks on free range.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

I sold all of my goats recently because after doing the math I figured out they increased consumption here rather than production

Production is the heart of farming. To be able to produce excess calories from nature

My chickens on the other hand are gold and they're at their most efficient the less I mess with them. God already perfected the chicken when He made RJF millennia ago. Now here in 2032 I either degrade the RJF so that it's more useful for my purposes, or I attempt to repair the dysgenic birds that man has created so they survive better

Somewhere on this spectrum is the ideal bird for free-range farming. Right now I have an Indio Gigante cock breeding my AGF and RJF so we'll see how that turns out

I'd love to see pics. Do you have a thread you're showing your birds in?

 

[Red Mangrove]

I'd love to see pics. Do you have a thread you're showing your birds in?

I don't have any decent pictures yet and he's brand new here so perhaps in a year after I have some documented results I can make a thread on it

I don't want to distract from OP's project, so I'll just share this one bad picture. It's my IG rooster with my favorite AGF hen, with both just under a year old. I love the blue legs and yellow hint to the AGF's feathers

 

[ElleEmie]

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.

I raise turkeys and have had good experience in Northern California raising turkey poults in a large run until 3-4 months old not fully imprinting bu

View attachment 3498659View attachment 3498677View attachment 3498688
Random pics of the terrorfowl chicks on free range.

very interesting color on some of those!

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Bad news in the short term, but maybe good news in the long term. The free range sickness is rearing its ugly head. Several of the chicks have died of it. I’m about down to half their original numbers.

However, a percentage of them show no signs of the sickness. I have decided that instead of re-cooping them for a time, which is usually what it takes to reverse the sickness, I’m going to let nature take its course and thin out all but the strongest chicks. If only 10 make it without my further intervention, that will be enough to work with.

Here’s a bunch of then lounging around:

That a large percentage of chicks still get the free range sickness within the first 2 weeks of being turned out tells me I need more resilience in them. I’ve decided that another layer of outcrossing will be appropriate. At some point, I believe I’ll eliminate whatever weakness is in them that causes a large number of them to fall sick shortly after being turned out. Even if all that genetic strength amounts to is a behavioral cue to avoid eating certain plants.

Sherman is my number one candidate to add in another layer of resilience. He’s still a big chick and he is already slightly taller than Azog.

I am strongly considering switching over entirely to hen-raised brooding for the remainder of the year. There’s no doubt that the hen brooded don’t get the free range sickness like incubated chicks do, suggesting that it is in fact caused by what the chickens ingest. This theory is also supported by the idea that terrorfowl chicks I’ve sent off farm aren’t developing the symptoms of the free range sickness.

I have my money on the chicks eating too much dog fennel.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

I am strongly considering switching over entirely to hen-raised brooding for the remainder of the year.

Do your terror fowl hens go broody? I thought that the liege hens don't usually.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Do your terror fowl hens go broody? I thought that the liege hens don't usually.

They do. Of the three I received from my brother from his line, two are broody where I know where their nests are, and I think the third is broody in a hidden nest. One of the three had been previously broody in my brother’s care. Indo’s sister Shadow had also been broody multiple times before I culled her.

Broodiness and a degree of game drive seem to be dominate traits when crossed into lines where they are absent. Those are all coming from the aseel side of the equation of the terrorfowl.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Correction, the third hen is not broody. I just saw her browsing on my lunch break.

Also, I relented and have allowed most of the surviving terrorfowl to be recooped. About 30 are in the coop and another 7-10 are free ranging. The ones left out are those that are plump to the touch at the breast and are roosting high at night. The ones in the coop are all the ones still roosting on the ground. They have varying degrees of skinniness. Some are near emaciation, others are just a bit too light. If they follow the pattern of the vast majority of other young free rangers that have struggled with the free range sickness, they’ll plump up over the next couple of weeks and when I turn them back out, they won’t struggle anymore.

Part of my decision to throw them this life line is for pity’s sake, and the other reason is I remembered last night that I have many healthy, strong, free rangers of various backgrounds that never struggled again after cooping them and turning them back out. Even Azog went through this phase where he ate salt bush, got sick and skinny, and I recooped him and he recovered fine. Now he free ranges like a champ and doesn’t miss a beat.

Also helping me with this decision is realizing my terrorfowl aren’t close to being finished. I can see that this generation would not be the ones I’d want to line breed. I will select the best couple of hens and stags that come out of this lot to continue the project, and the rest can just be yard birds that I get eggs off of and eat. I’ve invested this much into their rearing, so I might as well see this batch through to the end. I’d rather have 30 make it than 10, even if I only breed the best 10.

Finally, I realized that I turned them out during their peak growth period. Those that are surviving without struggling are tough indeed, and those that died quickly needed to be culled out as they likely would have been so disposed as small chicks were they had been raised by a hen. But in between may be otherwise healthy birds that simply can’t go from infinite commercial feed to daily scavenging and browsing during the time in their lives they are growing the fastest.

Of interest is that the toe marks are showing me which ones are dying. So far, they’re all of the batch raised off the ground in the tall brooder or a batch raised in a coop that was only moved onto green grass once. Of the 2 dozen raised in a light weight coop I moved like a chicken tractor, only 2 have died. So if I have somewhere around 37-40 survivors so far, about 22 of them are of that coop raised in the tractor from day one of their lives. Specific genetic pairings don’t seem to be making as much difference as method of brooding.