Do you free range your chickens?

[KreetchaKeepa]

I stopped free ranging mine. I have some new concerns about predators with cooler temps here. I have a fantastic guard dog, but she's in with us at night. Plus, I'm not missing the flies that their poop brought. Hah!

 

[U_Stormcrow]

I free range. We are on 30 acres, the chickens have the run of 5 (protected by an electric fence) and routinely escape it. Typical FL predators, including a pack of wild canines (probably two packs, honestly), but my losses have been almost entirely aerial predation. My flock size ranges from 55 to 85 , and I lose 2 or 3 a year.

It all comes down to risk management and acceptable risk levels for you, in your situation. I raise mutts I hatch myself. All of which I will eat (some sooner than later). My costs, when I lose a bird, are relatively low. If I were raising rare/high cost stock, my calculations might be a bit different, same if I had heavier predator pressures.

/edit the electric fence is VERY effective in keeping the neighbor's dogs out (they hunt boar, but they DO NOT like my fence - its almost 2 joules for four hot strings each about 1/3 mile). I do have to fence my gardens to keep my chickens out. I use step in metal fence posts 5' and bird netting on top of a raised bed. My birds are (mostly) too lazy to defeat it. Those few that made a habit of jumping the netting became dinner early.

 

[Mr Spot]

I only let mine out the last hour of the day and I stay outside with them. Not worth the chance of losing them to a predator. The rest of the time they are in the 14-1/2 X 60 foot covered run and that's where the food, water, and house is.

 

[raingarden]

We care for a quasi-feral free-ranging flock. There is one rooster and between 12 and 18 hens depending on who shows up for snacks on a given day. Nothing is fenced so they range over two or three other pieces of property besides our own. There is also a bunch of minimum-security cages and small pens for the bantams, cermanis, a spare rooster and some project gamefowl. None of the caged/penned birds are ever let out to explore because I don't want them breeding with the quasi-feral flock.

The free-ranging flock is pretty good about avoiding dogs and the occasional wild pig, but they loose a lot of their chicks to mongoose and norway rats. No other predators to speak of.

 

[WingsysRoost]

How high does the fence need to be?

Honestly, that will entirely depend on both the chickens you have and how motivated they are to get through the fence. Even among my flock (all Barred Rocks), I have a few that will test fences regardless of how high or theoretically chicken-proof said fences are, and others that really don't care.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Piggybacking, I have a 4' high electric fence (wire, not mech) protecting my pasture. The birds don't jump it.

The birds DO jump to the top of the 4' high gates providing entry to the pasture, and from there to the outside.

Inside the pasture, I have a 6' high fence made from a number of materials sewn together (mostly chicken wire) as a grow out pen. A few of my most motivated birds, in order to get to the better food inside, will fly at the fence then continue to flap their wings as they literally walk up the chicken wire in order to go over the top! Most of my birds aren't so athletic - but I have mutts, the genetics are "varied".

 

[HollowOfWisps]

Currently mine are free ranged on 30 acres, but I am home all day. Sometime starting early next year I will not be here during the day so we are converting the barn lean-to into our poultry area that will lead to a fenced area. We plan to in the next couple of years put up a complete perimeter fence with electric. When that happens they will be allowed to range all over the property again during the day.

 

[Sally PB]

I have thought about fencing in "the side yard" where the chicken coop/run is located. The topography is suitable: it's the top of a ridge, so fairly well defined. Unfortunately, that space is also where we turn cars around, have overflow parking, play frisbee with the dog, split wood, access the wood piles, access the propane tank, dry the laundry, etc. No way we can fence it and do all of that, and those activities can't be relocated. Except the frisbee part.

For one summer, we had the coop/run "down the hill, by the garden." It's an ideal place for the coop/run, also fenceable. But down the hill is waaaay dooooown the hill. More predators roam that area, and one slip and fall for me could mean a broken hip.

We moved the coop back up to the house that fall. (It's built on a trailer specifically to be moveable.) I realized the next spring how much I liked having the coop near the house, and there it stays.

 

[K0k0shka]

How high does the fence need to be?

Even the lazy/heavy ones that don't normally like to fly or jump high can surprise you when they get spooked. A good scare gives them an extra boost! Some of mine act like they can't jump 2 feet up to the climber I made for them, but one day I brought a new waterer into the run (gasp!) and they flew 7 feet straight up and got caught in the overhead netting!

 

[3KillerBs]

For one summer, we had the coop/run "down the hill, by the garden." It's an ideal place for the coop/run, also fenceable. But down the hill is waaaay dooooown the hill. More predators roam that area, and one slip and fall for me could mean a broken hip.

There's a steeper bit of slope right where the nest box is located. In wet weather I go around the long way.

We really need to terrace that and make steps.