foraging abilities of different breeds

[beans2]

its interesting that your chooks don't go out when its raining.
I live in one of the wettest parts of Scotland, so its rarely not raining. My chooks seem to just get used to it and go out anyway.

 

[chuckachucka]

I have several bantam breeds and I have noticed that they are all quite poor foragers. They include a serama, a pekin bantam, a silkie, a Belgian danver, a polish and a booted bantam.

I provide layer pellets and they free range for twelve hours a day in my large lawn garden which has just a few shrubby plants and a small tree. I live in the UK and the bugs here seem to be less exotic than in other countries, mostly small worms and slugs. The bantams will not touch the slugs though and rarely bother with worms unless they are the tiny white curled type.

I have one rooster and he leads the girls around all day but they spend very little time digging and mostly just peck at dirt and eat a bit of grass. Of the bantams I would say the serama, the smallest of all, is the most active forager and the Belgian is the least active.

I also have one large hen, an asil, and she is drastically more active at foraging. She will spend most of the twelve hours digging and scratching in the mud and high grasses and will eat virtually anything including whole snails in their shell.

 

[chrisb01]

@beans2 , they probably would forage in the rain, I'm the one that puts them in jail if it's raining.. We get a good share of rain this time of yr, I'll leave them out there when it rains and report back here how they did..

 

[beans2]

@beans2 , they probably would forage in the rain, I'm the one that puts them in jail if it's raining.. We get a good share of rain this time of yr, I'll leave them out there when it rains and report back here how they did..

can't wait to hear about it!

I've often found that we humans will naturally refrain from subjecting our animals to something we wouldn't like, which makes some sense except for the fact that they often want different things to us.

Here in Scotland a lot of people make their poor dogs go out in a blizzard even when they're not a hardy breed (like whippets) because we're so used to the native breeds being all weather dogs.