Do some people think free range = no food?

[cray4en]

Hello Sky Warrior,

I wormed my around a year ago and the vet I got the meds from said not to eat the eggs for a week. I would assume it would be about the same for the butcher block.

good luck!



Quote:
Just out of curiosity, how long do you think I should wait after deworming to butcher them?

 

[nnbreeder]

Through the summer we always have a small flock of about 10 birds that forage for their own feed. By scattering the horse manure they help to keep flies down and they keep any spilled feed cleaned up which helps keep the rodent population down. I will keep several waterers filled for them.

Different breeds are better foragers then others are. Most Games will be fat and sassy with just what they forage while birds bred for production will starve to death on the same ground. Through the winter we will keep feed out for the birds running loose but the mostly prefer to scratch through the hay the horses scatter about for seeds and such. And birds that were raised in family groups will do much better the hatchery stock that didn't have mom and dad to teach them where to find food.

 

[Marion565]

I have 5 hens and 2 roosters and they freerange from sunup to sundown. I do have layer pellets available to them in the coop 24/7 and I give them one scoop of scratch about two hours before bedtime.
I filled my feeder up about a week ago and they have not touched it. I am getting 4 eggs out of 5 hens that just started laying.
So I think they are getting enough protein by eating all the bugs on my property, and I mean all the bugs.
I used to have a compost heap that was full of bugs but now I have a compost patch that is "bugless"

I am going to continue to let them freerange and supply additional feed, I am sure that in the winter my feed bill will be much higher but for right now I am enjoying the fact that I am not feeding 25 lbs every two weeks.

 

[Cindiloohoo]

My birds all get let out first thing in the morning to free range, they have feed in the coop at night for midnight snacking...it's rarely touched, but there if they need it. I also have some form of bread for them every afternoon as a treat. I take cornbread/biscuit/white bread out to the flock of 40 ish birds and toss some around to everyone and they go nuts. My feed bill is next to nothing, but I have some fat birds. It sounds like those boys were not getting enough though.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Based on what our ancestors did, way back in the primative days, like when I was growing up. It was in the hills of east Tennessee so the climate is different than in Montana, wetter in the summer and warmer and less snowy in the winter. When we got a snow, it hardly ever stayed on the ground more than a week, usually just a couple of days.

We kept a flock of chickens. We never fed them during the summer. They had to find their own food. Every hen was not laying every day. I cannot remember how many hens we had versus how many eggs we got, but we got plenty for a family of 5 kids that had eggs for breakfast every day. Some people will say they are not all laying every day so they are inefficient. We spent zero money for food and got all the eggs we needed for eating eggs and hatching enough chickens to keep the flock going and feed us some chicken meat on a pretty regular basis. Other than gathering eggs once a day, we spent almost no time taking care of the chickens. How efficient can you get?

In the winter, the chickens pretty much foraged for their food. The hogs had been butchered so the table scraps were put out where the chickens could get them. We fed the cows hay on the ground, so the chickens got some grain from that. There were still lots of weed and grass seeds and dead vegetative matter around for them. Plenty of cow and horse manure to scratch through too. We had plenty of days above freezing so they could scratch and find some creepy crawlies, but these were obviously not as common as in summertime. If there was snow on the ground, we would feed them shelled corn, not cracked corn. That would get them by until they could get out and forage for a more balanced diet. We grew the corn ourselves, about two acres worth, for the livestock, cows, horses, and chickens. We did not buy it, other than seed, fertilizer, and the time we invested in it.

We did not have chickens falling over dead from malnutrition. They were not fat, but if you read many of my posts, you'll see that I think many of us overfeed our chickens to the point that they are unhealthy anyway. A slender chicken does not mean an unhealthy chicken, any more that a slender human means an unhealthy human, but that is getting into my opinion. I'll try to behave. The egg production did drop a lot in the winter like it does with any flock in molt. We did still got several eggs during the winter, probably mostly from new pullets in their first laying season, so I don't think they were greatly undernourished.

If a chicken's crop is really empty, it will feel hungry and eat until that crop is stuffed. If they forage and have a little food in the crop, they will still rush over to the feeder when you put something in it, but they will not stuff their crop as much. For a chicken that has been mostly foraging for its food, any feed that is easy to get is probably like a kid with candy on Halloween night.

From what you posted, I don't see any evidence of any mistreatment. They sound like chickens that have been given the freedom and responsibility to find their own food and be responsible for themselves. As friendly as you say they are, I'd think they have probably been well treated. I'd certainly look for signs of worms, mites and lice too. I do that all the time anyway. But I personally would not be too worried about them. Just enjoy them.

 

[joebryant]

Quote:
Say WHAT! Someone'd better "work" that out again; that's less than an area that's 9 feet by 10 feet per chicken. NO WAY!

 

[rebelcowboysnb]

I have caged breeding birds that get laying pellets. I also have free ranged birds that have the run of 3 acres. It has overgrown pasture, yard, woods, muscidine vineyard an apple trees. The free ranged birds get only scraps an the occasional hand full of feed to keep them tame. I use to keep game chickens that way an they did fine. Now I keep EEs an Cochins this way. You cant tell the free ranged from the caged birds. All livestock can live off the land. Thats why we domesticated them in to livestock. If you are having to buy food for any livestock than you are raising them in a in inefficient manner. Remember that all these animals that people are buying feed for were raised off the land 200 years ago. Now people wonder why they cant make a living farming anymore. To much money going out that dont need to be. Dont need all that specal feed. Dont need more than one tractor. Dont need a new tractor for that matter. People nickel an dime there selves out of there profits in an effort to make things easier. I would rather need 3 hens living off the land to get a egg a day an them lay for 4 or 5 years then to have one hen with feed in a cage to get a egg a day for 2 years. People now a days have a skewed idea of what efficiency really is. An egg a day from 4 hens for no feed input is better than a egg a day from 1 hen spending money on feed.

 

[Camo]

successful free ranging with no feed input requires that a lot of variables to line up. namely: quality/size/variety of the forage area, geographic location,climate, type of bird, the birds upbringing(whether or not it has been taught how to forage properly) and foraging time.( there are a few others but these are about the most important.) the truth of the matter is that most people don't have all those things and will have to supplement feed.

Admittedly there are exceptions. my dad raised some game/leghorn crosses that thrived on 1.5 acres of bad grass, a little woods, and good ol' western nc red clay mud with nothing extra but a little cracked corn now and then, and i have two wild late season banty chicks right now who survive just fine on what they find/steal.

side note: the chickens raised buy the average man 200 years ago and to this day in the holes and hollars, were and are a much tougher bunch. just my two cents

 

[werecatrising]

I have friends who raise chickens because they need to for the eggs. They have very little money. They free range the birds, offer a bit of corn or scratch every day and free choice oyster shell. Their birds seem to do fine. They get plenty of eggs and have a constant supply of new chicks born and raised there. I choose not to do that. My birds are a hobby. I get enough money from the eggs to pay for their feed. I keep the feeder full and a bowl of oyster shell out at all times. They seem to know what they need. The majority of the time (in good weather) the feeder is barely touched. Then they will pig out on feed for a few days. I figure on these days they aren't finding insects. Come winter I know they will go through more. I supplement with scratch and am raising mealworms. The only thing I worry about in the snowy months is finding greens.

So, yes, I am sure there are people who think they don't need to feed free ranged birds. I think the instances where that is ok are few- but I'm sure it works well for some.

 

[hillfarm]

Mine free range all day. Than they get pellets before bedtime to encourage them to roost in their pen. They get scraps and such. I spoil them for my pleasure. But I know the old lady across from us only free ranges and she gets tons of eggs. Her hens arent as plump or as healthy looking as mine, but same result.