Dixie Chicks

[Amberjem]

So I have a topic for everyone I've been thinking of free range and the bennys of doing so and the draw backs .. What does everyone consider the positives about free ranging and what do you consider the draw backs about free ranging?

 

[WVduckchick]

yep fortunately and the tmj is starting to ease up thank goodness..

I have mild tmj, and also get migraines. Had a killer one Friday. So I feel your pain

 

[Beer can]

So I have a topic for everyone I've been thinking of free range and the bennys of doing so and the draw backs .. What does everyone consider the positives about free ranging and what do you consider the draw backs about free ranging?

Benefits, lots.
Draw backs for me, hawks. ..

 

[Peep_Show]

Free ranging
Benefits: Less feed bill, less cleanup
Drawbacks: Predators

 

[CanuckBock]

Heel low:

Hmm...hope you are not defining free range like some of the commercial farms are allowed to--what a rot of utter garbage, eh! Something like outside access to a 15 foot area and you can label your products free ranging even if the birds never use the tiny space allotted (terribly afraid, most mush meaters or swill eggers have to be taught how to be REAL chickens to go outside--scary, eh). Prove your birds can access the outside...maybe five percent of thousands of birds can access the outside and they tell the uninformed consumers its FREE RANGE?

Drawbacks to free ranging is predation, but to me who has only ever lost one bird since 1998 (old hen stayed out one night and a most welcome here owl that keeps the rodent populations down, well the owl ate her instead of mice- Earth Day 2007), more so the weather that is conducive to free ranging--that good summer weather was as rare as chicken teeth this year. Wet year does not even come close and right now, like May, unseasonably mild here in the middle of November--when forty below hits (and oh yes, it shall), gonna be something really unkind to get use to as in tout sweets. We NEVER had summer...one day in May at 28C...thought, wow, maybe I shoulda planted but then in June, second week in, four days of frozen in a row, killed crap left and right--Rick told me not to tear out the beans and yes, we got ONE maybe two feedings outta like $45 worth of bean seeds I planted. My bazillion kinds of tomato varieties I wanted to try out...never got any heat in the greenhouse, so we never got more than like one pathetic green tomato per plant. Potatoes did great but I wanted my cake and eat it too...bring on the tomatoes to try...oh well...

Bizarre weather...so not alot of free ranging happened...sad to say.

Washed down daily...the green, green grass of home on the range ​

Waterfowl and mud or wet conditions, quickly turn your green lawns to muck pies--when my birds DO go out on the bird lawns, after such when I put them away; I spend at least half an hour with a hose blasting all the birdy plops so the grass under each poo pile does not die. Rain showers, make landfowl miserable out and about. All our 30+ outbuildings have roofs, so we CAN control the weather as far as sky falling wetness. River sand floors make plops easy to dry up and remove. So the benefit of free ranging is healthier birds able to harvest bugs, and greens, sunshine and shade, dust baths, etc...but these things in the right facilities can also be on offer without a winged predator swooping in and harvesting some of your birds on you.

Free range is natural, but in Nature, those that zig when they should zagged end up on someone's dinner menu. The valuable breeders are contained in our Duece Coop and have outdoor runs year round for fresh air. The negative is I have to bring them greens, I have to remove the soiled bedding and replace with new, and they cannot squish mud between their toes (elevated roofed runs). The retired breeders, different story as you can risk losing them for a better quality of life--ask yer chook...do you want a happy short life or a dull boring long well protected one...free ranging when conditions allow for it is truly more fun for the beings involved. We get baseball sized hail here...so the sky is falling is a true blue concept in the summertime. You better be home to rush out and scoot them all inside before they get pelted (to death).


Chicken manure, livestock and poultry poos are distributed outside when you free range, saves you some pitching of poops I guess unless you over populate your free ranging space. Too many outside or in, and you gotta do something or other to uncontaminated the saturations.

Decent stock dogs work well too...never have to fret the birds are not protected with them girls on duty, eh​

Deterrent to predation...stock dogs, livestock guardians, remove your worry that the flocks, bevies, etc. are not being guarded, contained and looked after.


If you happen to let the birds have access to outdoors where you are composting some piles or other...many of the clean legged chooks can quickly toss and aerate a pile rather nicely...so long as you don't have nasty items that will make the ill in the pile, should be good. Make them chooker tillers work for their supper. One old timer use to feed morning some balanced rations, but in the afternoon, he'd toss some scratch in the litter and stand by and admire the fortitude his birds had to find that last delicious grain!


Foraging in a rich safe environment makes better premium eggs and meat...a chicken can balance its diet by having access to a whole host of inputs...balanced rations, usually are made for commercial enterprises where fast growth, no attention to intelligence, structure, longevity, proper making of internal organs is worried about. A bird on range that perhaps needs more calcium for its shells, can find a source maybe better than from a commercially balanced crumbled diet (ever note on a store bought egg... no more shell than absolutely necessary to get it home to the consumer). Free ranging birds may have more access to sunshine to utilize nutrients too (vit D for strong decent shells). We living beasts are not cookie cutter identicals. And speaking of sunshine, those birds free ranging can often do the dead chicken in the sunlight and sanitize their plumage...and dirty dust up in combat with external parasites, too. Yes, many of us provide rubber tubs for dust bathing but jest in case you don't, birds will make their own dust bathing area. Sunny and balanced with shaded pens are possible too.


I find our birds with clean legs tossing my limerock pathways about (rocks a flying!) in the eternal search for grubs and goodies, etc. Makes more work for me to rake them back to proper but hey, extra slice of pie perhaps for having to deal with the added labours--happier birds costs you!

So just like caged layers...suddenly people "think" that if we uncage them, they will be better...not so much. Studies done show that litter based (no cages-lotsa birds out in one big community area) systems have hazards unto itself. Bacteria and disease can pile up on mass with many contributors and one sick bird, can expose the entire group to the bad issue. Cannibalism happens in a cage of chooks (given enough room as one sheet of regular sized paper to exist in) but massive issues can transpire in litter systems...one hen picking at another is one thing in a cage, birds out and about having a free for all (think bird free ranging, gets into trouble and cuts itself...starts bleeding and...yeh, yuck! Some chickens can join a mob and act like horror...a singular thinking mass of badness) can be quite another. Free range with supervision...yeh, you betcha because birds at large are just that...running risks and need to be watched, preciously watched for signs of trouble before they happen.


Birds contained in a coop, they can be found, birds out and about, one could be hiding in a spot you overlook. Watchful, diligent and well prepared, free ranging requires more work in other aspects than birds in a coop and run. Up to you to still keep them safe and do your due diligence.


Few extra tasks like making sure there is fresh clean water for the free-for-allers...do you want a tub of oystershell and grit out there too...more buckets and containers to maintain.


Freedom (in the term FREE range) means you are willing to risk harm and death to them. If you are OK with that and won't cry the blues, have at her. If your place is animal proofed (no antifreeze drips for them to consume, no dangerous areas they can get at, containment in a safe place), landscaped appropriately (no poisonous plants and the more delicious plantings are fenced off from being attacked by the birds--how many times you get contacted that "we want sheep to mow the grass because our cows are too big and messy..."--great if your house is surrounded by pasture land with no plants you care about how they come out looking after the ruminants mow), and they can't bust loose outta your property's perimeters, give it a go. That means the farm animals are contained in the safe to be farm areas. Woe be to someone that just kicks the shed door open at dawn and expects all dozen hens will be back inside that evening if they have not bullet proofed their property for the things our creatures find to do.


Free ranging means you have a perimeter of containment. Fencing for me is more about what I can keep outta my place than what might want to escape it. LOL Neighbours' pets, wild predators, wandering at large livestock...more like you are expected to keep things out than worry about keeping things in here.


In the a.m., are you able to hold off setting your flock free so they have time to lay eggs in the nest boxes, you can leave a coop door open so the females can return to deposit their cackleberries...or in some cases, some of the overly motherly types can wander off and cache a nest for hatching out...making you think you lost one only to find out, nope, you just increased the chicken math by eight or so fuzzy butted chickeroos in three weeks time... Ooops...unplanned parenthood!

And for those who still believe that wildbird populations are to blame for making home flocks sick (we don't sign on to that concept--thanks! We feed wild birds and are not about to stop that any time soon...crock of...yeh...whatever...), you'd also be exposing your flock to wild birds flocking in (oh them bad bad wilds, eh) and all the risks some associate with diseases that can get transferred by exposure to them (bad bad) wilds. I do however concur that things like Marek's Disease can and does blow in on the winds, ten mile radius, so if you have neighbours with a flock down the road or alley way, you could be overly exposing the birds to this threat by having them outside fully available and not contained inside house and run. I mean eventually things would work themselves inside the coops...no pressurized decontamination areas I presume...but whatever.


Free range birds come into contact on mass with items they may or may not have been exposed to inside a coop and run. Little groups of birds coming into contact with each other, pecking orders needing to be established (or re-established if you house some flocks separately and keep turning them loose together...males and females establishing who is boss and where the individuals all belong in the new relationship out free ranging), access to new foods (good or bad), situations where they may react in ways they never have before, etc.


Something new, something different...lots of goods and lots of bads and as always, up to us the caretakers to ensure all goes along swell...not go to He77. LOL
So that be that lot of rot from off the top of my egg head...

Doggone & Chicken UP!

Tara Lee Higgins
Higgins Rat Ranch Conservation Farm, Alberta, Canada

 

[Cold Canadian]

Free range benefits .....healthy critters , less feed , bug control etc etc

Drawbacks ....predators is the highest , mess comes in at a close second , keeping on the yard is always a issue ....especially if you have close neighbors ....

 

[perchie.girl]

Free range for me is equal to keeping them in a coop and run. Forage here is gone very quickly. Eaten by the locals... Quail, Three kinds of Rabbits, two or three kinds of rats, Ground squirrels, chipmonks, mice, voles, and deer.

Bugs and grashoppers little lizards the occasional mouse and young snake are pretty much all to be had.... When the Guineas forage they cover at least twenty acres hunting.

Here the poultry brings in the predators.... coyotes mostly. But we have Bobcat Mountain lion and the occasional dog. Hawks eagles owls and falcons too.

My best success with poultry was when my neighbor's dogs would do critter patrol on my place. and when I go back I am going to have a doggy crew to do that job.

deb

 

[Beer can]

Worst part of free ranging for myself having a bunch of ignorant can't remember to take their shoes off at the door kids....the poop.
:-D

 

[perchie.girl]

Worst part of free ranging for myself having a bunch of ignorant can't remember to take their shoes off at the door kids....the poop.
:-D

LOL... Im guilty of that one. Or when the dog decides that Cecal poo is just the most wonderful thing in the world and dabbs it behind her ears.....

Hence the reason I want tile or concrete floors with drains in them.... in every room.

deb

 

[hennible]

Cons for me are predators (I lose a few almost every spring), torn up flower gardens, stepping in poop (well mostly listening to others complain about it, for whatever reason despite being given four acres to roam they really like to sit by my mom basement suite entrance... I think they like the pea gravel)
Pros for me, they love it, the dog loves it (gives him purpose), the kids love it, great tillers (con rouen ducks ate all my pea sprouts three darn times!), pest control, less coop mess, less feed during the nice parts of the year...