free range chickens feeding them

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I have 200 free range chickens I let them out at daylight and close them up at dark. I had a thought today since there out all day do i need to feed chickens feed if there getting the same stuff in the grass and stuff any advice on that and any advice of how I can cut the cost of the feed bill?

 

[River3330]

Good question, I eagerly await the answer to that one, I have free range chickens that look so healthy, I just give them a small sprinkle of poultry mix when I let them out and the same when I put them to bed, they love this but I'm sure they don't need it.

 

[Den in Penn]

It would save if you didn't have to but feed. The problem is that the pasture provides different foods at different times. They may not be getting the nutrients they need at the right times. Putting them on the pasture will save. Right now my birds are only out a few hours in the evening. This has cut the feed consumption way down. Although while it was drying up the end of June they needed more bought feed. So even if they were out full time I still would have feed available.

 

[centrarchid]

As soon as you start talking large numbers of birds free-ranging together the pasture has a very difficult time sustaining the needed forage unless the birds start to greatly increase the area they forage in or you move them about. Another complicating issue beyonds Den in Penn's point is that not all birds are good about getting away from feeders. We used to free range American games in a flock size of about 200 birds. They compensated for decline in pasture's ability to provide forage by going farther away from central roost as they foraged. Sometimes they would also hug pasture perimeter marked by vegetated fence rows but totally by-pass center of feilds that otherwise has lots of eats. Another problem that emerged is that you would have groups of 20 birds breaking of to roost well away from central barn lot. Not everybody has effective predator management to enable such dispersed foraging and roosting patterns. That many birds free ranging also requires dog(s) unless you have an extremely good fence and you may still have hawk issues depending on other aspects of how you manage your flock.