Free ranging meat and egg layers together?

[hjpointers]

Hello. I have 13 laying hens and a rooster that have a coop with unlimited amount of oats, oyster shells and laying grain and they free range during the day. They come back to the coop throughout the day to eat and/or lay eggs.

We want to start raising ranger meat chickens and build a separate pen for them but let them free range all day with the layers. 1) how do you keep the chickens going into the right pen every night and 2) how do you keep them eating the food their suppose to?

 

[Percheron chick]

I don't raise meat birds but I wouldn't mix flocks of chickens for the short term. Your meaties are always going to be younger and only around for 2 months so don't change the dynamics of your layers or create the potential to introduce something into the flock. I'd build their own fenced in area or turn one group out in the AM and the other in the afternoon.

 

[chooks4life]

Chooks will always check out if there's a better pen for them,but in general will sleep where you kept them for the first week or so. I can only give you answers that are relevant to my knowledge, which isn't total by any stretch of the imagination, plus I live in Australia and most people here are American. It's all different, different feeds, different genetics, different environment, even different meanings for the same words, lol. Anyway, here's my anecdotal info on the subject:

You will have problems if you take a (generally feed-inefficient) heavy production layer strain that's always running hungry and try to prevent them from eating the food of another (likewise, usually feed-inefficient) heavy production meat strain, when both have access to eachother's food, I think they'll both choose the most fattening. I think your layers will get over fat and your broilers will miss out and possibly get bullied terribly.
Quote: Not sure what you mean. Free range meat chooks? A certain breed or strain of meat chooks known as 'rangers'?

I keep dual purpose, not strictly meat breeds, but if you're talking about the really heavy production broilers, since their feed needs are so dire they may not be interested in free ranging, nor physically able to do much of it, and I'm inclined to think your rooster will possibly distress them unduly. They're not like the hens he's used to, and heavy meat breeds are more or less cripples, which usually doesn't go down too well with active chooks who've never been raised in a cripple-tolerant society. Commercial farmers in Australia who claim to rear free range meat chooks actually follow rules in books about how far to put the feed trays away from the houses to get them to come out, and how far is too far therefore making them unlikely to make it back to bed. They can't get them to actually free range because physically they are so incapable. They suffer. The distances talked about in the books are about two metres on average! People who want to claim freerange are often steering away from the heavier production birds because they are so limited. Everyone I know who's ever kept them never would again. The sooner the heavy production strain goes extinct, the better.

 

[mocluckin]

I've just ordered my first batch of meat chickens... we already have 22 layers that are in a pasture with our goats. They have their own coop in the pasture and they free range during the day over a couple of acres of pasture. My plan for the Rangers is to have a separate shelter in the pasture area with electric netting up around it to limit the area they can forage in. Hopefully it will keep the layers and meat birds separated so there are no issues with mingling feed and birds.

 

[Percheron chick]

Not sure what you mean. Free range meat chooks? A certain breed or strain of meat chooks known as 'rangers'?

Rangers, Freedom and Reds, are a breed of meat chickens that more closely like European meat chickens. Tastier than cornish X.

 

[chooks4life]

Quote: Ah, I see. Rangers with a capital 'r'. Thanks. Would have to look them up to know what they look like but they sound more able than what I associate with the phrase ;meat chickens' --- enormous white bricks of chicken with the most incredibly thick legs, half-feathered and all topped off with a six-week-old's head. Now I'm picturing something probably more capable of walking two dozen steps a day...