Free range: will they bother the neighbors?

[Love2read]

This means nothing. Standard Red-Tailed Hawks will happily take a full grown Buff Orpington. Before we got the goats, we simply budgeted that we'd lose at least 10 birds per year to predators, including hawks, raccoons, coyotes, foxes, weasels and neighborhood dogs. And that's with our birds being pastured, not free-range. Luckily the goats seem to be a great deterrent.

If you free range, be prepared for the predators to come out. They are there, even if you haven't seen them.

I'm fully prepared and expecting that I'll probably be losing some. It's a given when allowing chickens to free-roam. *shrug*

Our run doesn't have a top at all and we've never had any hawks/eagles try and go after the chickens. Not saying that they won't, simply that it hasn't happened yet and we've had chickens for a year so far. Our yard has very few trees, so I plan on putting up some make-shift shelters and will still be doing a coop for them to roost in at night and lay their eggs, but otherwise the bantums will be fully free-roam.

With us being surrounded by open fields as far as the eye can see, most ground predators stay far away and stick to the wooded areas. Only opossums brave the open around here.

 

[donrae]

Talk to all your neighbors BEFORE you free-range these birds, and make sure you have their OK. They will go over there, and they will be destructive. They'll rip out a garden, dig out the compost, spread the mulch onto the sidewalk, and poop on the porch.

I happen to believe that good fences make good neighbors, and would never in a million years allow my birds onto my neighbor's property. We all have to live together.

x2

This is funny--my husband just walked past the computer and saw the thread title...he said "of course they will, they'll be over there pooping all over"....not even knowing details, etx.

 

[JadedPhoenix]

I just ordered some bannies and would like to let them be free-range. We already have a dozen chickens(Barred Rocks and Production Reds) that we have in a coop and run and I hate it. The run is nice and big, but even with it's big size the chickens managed to mow down everything green within the first week, lol. So I want to do things differently with the new chicks.

My main concern, however, is that the chickens will go over and annoy the neighbors. I've read about how they poop all over everything(window sills, cars, porch, etc...) and don't want the neighbors to be stepping in chicken poo. ><

We live out in the country and have a humble little acre of land and only a tiny handful of scattered neighbors, so I'm curious about how far the chickens will roam and if it's really even something I need to worry about? I love my chickens and want to get quite a few, but don't want to be an annoying neighbor...

The answer to that would depend on a few things. One, the closeness of the houses. At just one acre, your chickens may go next door in search of grubs. Two, the tolerance of the neighbors. Three, the personalities of the chickens.

As for the distance that the chickens will roam, I once heard that they can go as far as 200 yards or two football fields. The less they have to eat at home the more they will spread out.

 

[Love2read]

Hmmm...if I had to guess I'd say that the closes neighbor is probably around 100 yards away and the others are about 3 times that distance(no one lives on the acre and a half next to us and the people on the other side of that lot live on the far edges of their property and each own at least an acre of land themselves.

The closest neighbor has a dog that they keep tied up outside though and he barks at EVERYTHING, so I'm hoping he might discourage the chickens from going over there. No one has fences out here.

Behind all of our properties and across the road is all cornfields/beanfields. I'm guessing the chickens will probably spend most of their time out there digging in the dirt(if it lays fallow this year).

 

[WalkingOnSunshine]

Behind all of our properties and across the road is all cornfields/beanfields. I'm guessing the chickens will probably spend most of their time out there digging in the dirt(if it lays fallow this year).

And if it doesn't lay fallow, they'll still be over there. Don't forget to talk to the farmer that owns the field. Just because he has many acres of crops doesn't mean it's OK for you chickens to destroy some of them any more than it's OK for the chickens to destroy a neighbor's tomato plants.

I'm sorry to keep beating at this, but I'm a farmer's daughter, and it's shocking what people think is OK because it's farmland or because you have acreage or because "its the country." Cut some corn for decoration--that's OK right, the farmer has acres of it. Harvest some green soybeans for edamame, but you're not taking much, right? Go hunting on the land--no one else does, so it's OK, right? No, not right. The farmer's field is no different than someones factory, and if you wouldn't steal widgets from your neighbor's factory, don't take the farmer's crops. He's already losing bushels to wild animals, and doesn't need to lose crops to domestic animals as well.