Feeding too much reduces foraging?

[Outta Here]

This scene is beautiful and I love your porch. I am wondering how long you've had them? They seem like young pullets? This may be an unpopular opinion, but they are going to wreck that pretty porch with poop. Maybe they need some covered areas in the yard? Mine spend most of the day under the picnic table. Shade and hawk protection. Possibly some furniture off the porch with some food tidbits under it each day will reorient them in time to save the pretty porch...

Yes indeed you are right, they make a MESS and your suggestions are good ones! Most are 3 months, some are 4 months. So far I've been hosing the entire porch and furniture cushions (water resistant fabric) every day, but I may get weary of it. It's just so cozy to have them there that for now I'm willing. Here they are snoozing, harp strings in the foreground....I love playing out there, and who knows, maybe they even like the music!

p.s. We have family bbq dinner for our group of 10 on this porch every Sunday, so I give it an extra good cleaning in time for the cushions to dry. Poor chickens are prohibited Sunday afternoons!

 

[LizzzyJo]

Yes indeed you are right, they make a MESS and your suggestions are good ones! Most are 3 months, some are 4 months. So far I've been hosing the entire porch and furniture cushions (water resistant fabric) every day, but I may get weary of it. It's just so cozy to have them there that for now I'm willing. Here they are snoozing, harp strings in the foreground....I love playing out there, and who knows, maybe they even like the music!
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I bet they love the music! I don't know where you live, but here in the winter the poop will freeze very quickly and mound up - and I can't turn on the hoses. So, maybe you won't have that problem, but if you do look out!

 

[Outta Here]

Dog poop scooper! Pops it right off better than any other tool I've found. It's like a sharp putty knife on a pole! It rarely freezes here in Arizona except for an hour sometimes, but in Idaho we operated a dog boarding kennel and brought our tools when we moved...

But yeah, if I couldn't hose it, that would get nasty quickly, even if I removed the poop. There's always a residue...

 

[agold23]

Here is my flock "foraging" an hour after I let them out. Do any of you restrict food (feed only at night, etc.) for better foraging? Or do you think they just are great foragers and are full after an hour? They LOVE to hang out on my porch (hide under the chaise lounge when hawks screech) and seem to spend more time there than out on the grass and native area.

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My flock of 7 always have their feed and water available, and they eat until they’re full of that and then go on to forage. Once they’re done, they’ll lay under the deck in the sand or go on a little adventure into the woods. Much like cats, chickens are good at managing their food and won’t eat if they’re full. I don’t see why you should restrict their feed. Yours may not just be big on foraging which is fine Plus treats shouldn’t make up for more than 5-10% of their daily diet, not sure if grass and flowers count as treats though.

 

[Phaedra Geiermann]

Thanks! Then I'll just keep the hoopers full and keep cleaning porch poop daily! I know I should fence them off, but I actually like them close in--I come and sit (on a clean chair!) with them companionably. Sometimes I even play my harp for them!!
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If I am one of them, i will stay there for listening too

 

[Outta Here]

If I am one of them, i will stay there for listening too

Awww, that's sweet! Thanks...

Und lebst du in Deutschland?

 

[Chickassan]

Some breeds are just more into foraging than others are too.
Like my dominiques will forage even if food is right in front of them they actually prefer to forage.
The faverolles however would prefer room service.
I've also noticed it has a lot to do with if the rooster is an active participant, they go where he goes so if he's napping in the shade so are they.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

Mine like to "explore" and will range further from the barn when I am out with them. They seem to take some small comfort from the goats, too - when they aren't dancing underfoot to avoid being stepped upon. Their relative "comfort" with predator protection seems to have significant effect on how far they will range.

 

[Outta Here]

Some breeds are just more into foraging than others are too.
Like my dominiques will forage even if food is right in front of them they actually prefer to forage.
The faverolles however would prefer room service.
I've also noticed it has a lot to do with if the rooster is an active participant, they go where he goes so if he's napping in the shade so are they.

Room service!!! Love it!

 

[Outta Here]

Mine like to "explore" and will range further from the barn when I am out with them. They seem to take some small comfort from the goats, too - when they aren't dancing underfoot to avoid being stepped upon. Their relative "comfort" with predator protection seems to have significant effect on how far they will range.

"Their relative "comfort" with predator protection seems to have significant effect on how far they will range."
By George, I've think you've nailed it! I've been raising chickens for 44 years, but never tamed them as pets--they were livestock. They ranged all day widely over alfalfa pasture (they hung out with the goats as they ranged, too). Hawks were always overhead, and fox and skunk dens in the area, but I never worried about it or lost one (except to a feral cat in their coop one night!).
We did operate a 50-dog kennel where the dogs (in groups of 15) were all out playing freely together in fenced 1/2 acres of grassy field in the middle of their range. Maybe that kept the predators away.
But these recent ones are my babies and though we have 80 acres of mesquite, native grass, yucca, I really don't want them straying from my lawn too much. My German Shepherd watches them from the porch or yard, but if they wandered behind the barn, out to the cow corrals, or out in the desert, a lurking coyote could snatch one for sure before he smelled it.
So this makes sense to me that these don't forage as much because they aren't comfortable using a wider range. They stay mostly on the lawn and porch--by order of the rooster, too--because they sense danger any farther out.
In that case, I would rather have them alive than have a reduction in my feed bill, so I will keep their hoppers full and let them forage just for sunshine and health and happiness (mine in watching them, theirs in the sheer joy of freedom!)
Thanks for that great post!



p.s. to show how quick and sneaky coyotes can be, a friend in the suburbs of Phoenix took his tiny dog to piddle into their small back patio enclosed in a 7' cement block fence. He only saw a blur as the coyote who had leaped over and snatched his dog, leaped back. I worry about my chickens, but I never let my 6 lb poodle out alone, either!