Fluffy Butt Acres: Stories of our flock

[RoyalChick]

I’m on a roll with videos today. It’s SO nice out!

Also, the girls don’t know turkey vultures are NOT birds of prey. So cute!

For some reason I can't view them - it says there is 'unusual traffic' and won't let me! Which I am sad about as I love your videos.
I am going to check again later.

 

[Lady Red]

@micstrachan your videos are awesome! Thank you for sharing

 

[RoyalChick]

I’m on a roll with videos today. It’s SO nice out!

Also, the girls don’t know turkey vultures are NOT birds of prey. So cute!

I managed to solve my computer issue so I could view your lovely videos. How wonderfully green everything is and your ladies are lovely.

 

[Scrambles83]

I’m on a roll with videos today. It’s SO nice out!

Also, the girls don’t know turkey vultures are NOT birds of prey. So cute!

Loved the videos, beautiful weather and chickens
Ruby looks like she is doing better!

 

[featherhead007]

I wish I would do video, but I prefer to just watch all the others and their beautiful bird antics. You don’t need any from me

 

[Scrambles83]

I wish I would do video, but I prefer to just watch all the others and their beautiful bird antics. You don’t need any from me

You know we wouldn’t be disappointed if you did post a video though

 

[featherhead007]

I’m here with my new hen Emma, listening to John Denver, with Jaffar crowing just outside my window probably saying “ give me back my wife” so what! I was the first rooster, and always will be! And to Jaffar: “this farm is big enough for all of us!”

 

[ChicoryBlue]

I struggle with this as well... it is a hard thing to balance, freedom vs safety. You will have to figure out what works best for you and your tribe. Queenie, with her experiences before you brought her into your tribe, will be an asset if you choose to continue with free ranging at all. I like both the tractor solution and free ranging, where I depend heavily on my Roosters and more wary hens for protecting the tribes.

Thank you, @Kris5902 , that's it in a nutshell. I have noticed that since the attack Queenie watches more than she did, and Hazel is even more cautious too. There were two hawk kills in the few weeks I knew of Queenie's tribe, one just a day or so before I tried to wrangle them, so the attack here may have reinforced that experience. Here there is no rooster. Queenie's rooster then was as young and new as the pullets he was in charge of, with no elder rooster to learn from.

This is a long response but you have a serious decision to make and I want to be thorough and give you all I can from my experiences.

This has been my exact experience with hawks.

Spoiler: the shock of Dolly's death

Nothing prepares you to respond to some bokking to find a hawk standing on you hen eating it.

When I lost Dolly in the first attack Trisha was hidden under our deck. I could not find her. She would not respond to my calls. I thought I had lost both hens. It took hours and a whole lot of tears until she would respond and come out.

The hawks themselves have zero fear of humans. None whatsoever. They are the only wild animal I have personally encountered that does not care if we are near or not. I try to be with them when I free range them to deter hawk attacks but the hawks will attack anyway. I did thwart an attack a few months back by simply standing up but the hawk was going to attack Sansa when she was a couple of feet from me.

Despite multiple attacks since then, I have not lost another hen to hawks. The tribe has gotten much better at identifying the threat and tries to stick to cover when free ranging. The hawks have gotten hung up in trees and bushes while trying to attack. This has given me time to respond to the threat. As the leaves come out onto the trees their cover will also improve.

As to whether you should free range them or not, this is something that is tough to grapple with. In some ways I have been influenced by how @Shadrach manages his tribes. My tribe seems to enjoy being out. I have provided them with a much safety as I can. Most times I am with them as added safety. But I am again letting them be responsible for their own lives to some degree and giving them the freedom of the yard as much as I can.

Frankly I have lost my beloved Maleficent while she was "protected" in the big run. It is all about what level of risk you are willing to accept for your hens. I think having suffered so many losses over the years to things other than hawks has given me a little perspective that while a definite danger, hawks are not the only thing that would take one of my beloved pets from me.

I will also point out, that it is likely that none of your tribe knew that a hawk was a danger where you live. Outside of Queenie, I'm pretty certain that they had no mothers or fathers to teach them that danger comes from the sky. (I feel safe in guessing that Queenie also did not but it is possiblefrom her time free ranging previously that she had learned such a lesson). I would expect that their sentinel will be much more aware of the sky in the future and that they will not wander in the open but rather scamper accross it to cover like mine usually do.

Obviously only you can decide if you are going to keep them to the tractor or let them free range and I will not attempt to push you in any direction. I hope this has been helpful in some way.

Thank you for the long post, yes it has been very helpful to hear your thoughts on this, and I appreciate the time it takes to write it all out. All of your comments are well-taken. I can try to control or manage the area they roam in with more places added for cover and predator deterrents, and add my presence. But at least for now, they, aside from Queenie, have zero experience with predators. The point you (and @Shadrach also) make, that there are so many ways a chicken can and will die, be it predation and disease or injury, despite our best efforts - that point is an interesting one to keep in mind in weighing risk versus what one considers a "full chicken's life."

Yes, it is very clear they really enjoy their time out and about now that the snow is gone. They act determined and intense and focused.

I could write pages about this and make myself thoroughly unpopular in the process.
The bottom line, as they say, is if you free range chickens some of them are going to die through predation.
If you read enough of the emergencies and deaths post on BYC you would soon realise that chickens kept in coops and runs get predated to; lots in fact.
If you see a run enclosed with chicken wire for example you're looking at a death trap. Believing that because you keep chickens in a coop and run makes them safe is a delusion. When, rather than if, that run gets broken into by a predator you are likely to end up with more dead and injured chickens than you would have should they have been free ranging.because the chicken can't escape. Out of all the coops and runs I've seen here on BYC only about 5% are what I would consider secure from the majority of predators.
So, that's your first consideration, how secure is your coop and run?

Next question. Do you consider the chickens to be your chickens, or individuals with a right of self determination?
It seems a silly question but here on BYC it seems to be THE core question.
@cfonts chickens it seems have that right of self determination. They chose to live there. Just because cfonts didn't buy the chickens, or otherwise get them, doesn't mean she/he cares for them any less I should point out.
If you see them as 'your' chickens then you are likely to feel responsible for everything that happens to them and have a range of emotions should they die in your care including pride fired anger. If you might feel these things then don't free range. You will be consumed by guilt should something terrible happen.

Next is the way you manage the chickens if you manage them at all.
I accept that many are going to die and this is as nature intended. It doesn't mean I don't cry over them when they do die, but I am not such a person to believe I can keep any other creature safe from harm even if I kept them in a padded cell.
I try to let them replace the losses as they would naturally. I have had to compromise and limit who sits and clutch size, but then I belong to the chickens greatest abusing species. I am the chickens worst predator. I steal their eggs, kill some to eat and sneak up on them at night when they're locked in their coops to catch them.
So, to 'manage' a tribe or tribes that free range you need a rooster, maybe more than one. If you can't keep, or cope with roosters, broodies, etc, then free range probably isn't for you. Just letting them out when you have the opportunity to supervise them is not really what free ranging is about.

Are you primarily interested in the welfare of the species, or the welfare of your chickens?
I don't think there is much doubt that our interference has meant that the probability is, in the not to distant future, the majority of chickens, even those kept by people who believe they care about them will have had their natural life span reduced by 80%. That's human care for you.

Other considerations.
Could you kill an injured chicken?
This is probably the most important skill if you are going to free range. There are some injuries that should not be tended to. The agony the chicken goes through while the human does what it thinks is a kindness can be devastating.
Could you kill a predator?
Some predators won't take no for an answer.
You've already got some chickens. There are breeds that fare better than others for free ranging. How one intends to keep chickens and manage the population if necessary should be the first question one asks oneself before one gets chickens. Not many do.
If you have hatchery or store bought chickens they wont have a clue about predator avoidance and will be reliant on 'natural' instinct. Natural instinct isn't enough with true free ranging. They need to be taught, or learn through experience. It's taken three generations for the chickens here to learn enough to make the losses through predation drop from one a month to one or two a year, excluding chick deaths.
A great deal is made of assessing what predators one has in the area. This of course changes and sometimes very rapidly. I've read with complete incredulity people posting that they don't have any predators in their area. Most predators like chickens it seems. Word gets around.
What sort of terrain do you have that the chickens will free range on? An open yard with a few flowers is not suitable. Chickens need cover, lots and lots of it.
A car scrap yard is probably a better environment for cover than most people gardens.
If you live in the jungle, then they should find what they need quite quickly. If you live in the desert or in some bit of frozen tundra then you probably shouldn't be keeping chickens at all.

I write at the end of the book I've written that I am completely against the keeping of chickens unless they are Ex Batts. What I am in favour of, if the circumstances are right is the introduction of feral flocks that hopefully we might all learn to live with.without them being seen as pests. It's strange how ownership and control can turn a creature from pest to pet.

Thank you for taking the time to write this post. Everything you write is well worth consideration, and helped me to gauge myself against each criteria, and assess where I am in thinking about this now. It is different now than when I started keeping these chickens.

Your considerations are interesting in how everything is interelated. For instance: coops and runs as potentially greater risks than free ranging, chickens being responsible for themselves, and how we as chickeneers or bucket girls and boys fit in with determining how they live their lives. With inexperienced chickens (and I'm the same as a chickeneer) I think right now I love the goal of trying to aid the chickens in living as full a life as possible, ideally as a feral chicken would live, but there are constraints to that. My deal with my DH is no roosters. I can't go so far as just letting these hens all run free night and day, because they aren't capable of actually living that way at this point. They would all quickly die, and that would make the goal of living a full chicken's life pointless. This is not a reproducing tribe, what I have now, so I given this, there must be some middle way. To your question, I do care about the welfare of the species but I'm now primarily interested in the welfare of these particular chickens.

Your remark about keeping ex-batt chickens rather than supporting the practice of breeding for characteristics that end up not promoting survival (as I understand at least one aspect of your point) is well taken. If one accepts that factory chickens are here to one degree or another then the role of the chickeneer could be more of a rehabilitator and a caring life and death assister.

Yes I could kill a suffering chicken but I have not acquired the skill. I read a lot about various methods many months ago. How do you kill one well without any practice? Some predators I could kill but it would be illegal; others not, but regardless I see that as fruitless because there are always more to take their place, at least the predators around here.

I would be interested in your book - do onypu have anything about it on BYC or do you have a separate web site for it? In your stories thread, last I saw, it is not finished yet.

Good afternoon everyone. BYBob I hope Hattie starts feeling better. I also hope Alex's Blu's day gets better. ChickoryBlue, I am glad no one was seemingly injured during the hawk attack. Hawks are a constant worry in the back of my mind and I hate that due to legalities there is only so much you can do to deter them. Personally my first instinct would be to grab the gun but I prefer not to be in jail. Instead when they start circling the yard I've lit a few firecrackers and threw them up in the air. It scares them off for a few minutes but I know they don't go far and if they really wanted a chicken it would do nothing to stop them.

Thank you for your response, hawks here are protected also, and I do think the level of hunger will drive what they need to do.

What an awful experience! I’m so glad it didn’t end in tragedy!

Thanks, Lozzy, me too, we were lucky this time!

Here's the chickens' fluffy butts this afternoon and evening, foraging around a fallen but still living apricot tree near the front of the house.

Peanut and Queenie

 

[featherhead007]

You know we wouldn’t be disappointed if you did post a video though

When my video is ready, it will be a true production, not a short YouTube bit!

 

[ChicoryBlue]

Just buried Lock. Goshawk got her. It was quick at least. Mag and I will miss her most.
She's got her piece of walnut for the ferry man and is buried just behind the tribe coop.

Spoiler: A bit graphic." [ATTACH type="full

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I'm so sorry Shad!