My chickens are kept in a coop with a run. I would like to have them free range during the day but I live on a busy highway and am scared they will get run over. I am home during the day so i could watch them but I have no idea how to introduce them to free range and then get them back into the coop at night. any ideas????
They will take care of that themselves. Another amazing "Chicken's know what to do without a momma to tell them" thing. My 10 week old chickens have been putting themselves to bed in the coop when it starts to get dark from the first day they had access to the indoor run from the coop - about 4 weeks old. We didn't explain it to them, we didn't put them in the first night, they just went. All we have to do is lock the chicken door.
They will go in and out of the coop and indoor run to the outdoor run as they please if that door is open. The one thing they seem NOT to do is stay outside "free ranging" if we open the door from the outdoor run to the "world" and they have free access but we are not there. I guess we are their rooster - the security. I let them out Tuesday. They came running to the gate eager to range. They were all happily pecking at this, eating that, 40 feet from the outdoor run and I went back to the house to get my camera to take a picture of our drying out pond. Back in no more than 2 minutes and all the birds were back in the indoor run. One goes and they all go. Some are in more of a hurry to follow but within a few minutes, even the stragglers follow the crowd.
BTW, it took them over a week to decide they wanted to go from the indoor run to the outdoor run. Too new I guess. We had put them all out one day and figured they would remember and WANT to be out. Nope, too nervous, who can blame them? The Cubalayas (smallest of them all) got brave first, followed by one EE and an Ancona. They went out for a couple of days before any of the others followed. Now they crowd each other to get out. Some start at the bottom of the ramp, others cut the line and fly to the middle of the ramp. And if the one in front is hesitating, one from the back will just push on through.
It would probably be good to build a temporary small outdoor run attached to the existing run to get them started. Just a "round" of chicken wire held up by something. Then they can get used to being outside the "safe place" but they won't be far from the door and will find it easily. If they are like ours, they won't range more than a few feet from the door the first day. They'll get more brave and go farther but not (except for Peep) make huge distance changes all at once. They learned their area a little at a time as their comfort level allowed and will head back to the outdoor run whenever the mood strikes one of them.
I would put up a fence of some sort, portable poultry or permanent, whatever, between the chickens and the road. Mine haven't gone up to the road but there was a trio crossing up the road last week. I don't know if they were going home or going away from home. Not a busy highway though.
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