Free Ranging

[Three Stents]

I started letting my 4 girls out of prison on Sunday and of course they love it. This morning when I went out to check on them, all they wanted to do was to go eat grass. Seems like they are not interested in their feed. One thing that caught my attention this morning was the amount of poop in the poop table under the roost bars and in the run. Seems like the poops are runnier than normal. Wonder if this has something to do with them eating grass. What say you?

 

[davemonkey]

The different poop is likely just "as they are adjusting to a new food source". My girls tend to fill their crops early in the morning with the feed, and then spend the day in the grass nibbling on whatever they can find. Usually at some point in the afternoon they go back to fill crops with feed (and then back to the yard they go).

 

[BigBlueHen53]

There's a good chance they are finding bugs and worms out there, too.

 

[PatriciafromCO]

There's a good chance they are finding bugs and worms out there, too.

my favorite thing to do is add earth worms (helps break up our clay soil) I've dug up around our barns and where I have placed hay bales and thrown earth worms in there. I also like to get tons of crickets and release them in the barn and yard area. It pays back naturally over time.

 

[centrarchid]

When left to their own devices in a free-range environment with a diverse forage base of greens, invertebrates, and seeds the bulk of their intake by volume not accounting for moisture content is the greens. Once they start getting a good crop fill, they will then start showing looking more for the invertebrates and seeds. That said, they will almost always show a strong preference for feeding on the invertebrates if obvious in the environment. The fecal quality is a function of hydration. In my experience, chickens feeding only on dry processed feed are operating in a relatively dehydrated mode, hence the consumption of lots of water. When live greens and invertebrates make up a larger portion of the diet, it is much easier for them to consume more water even when access to a waterer is limited.

 

[Three Stents]

right now they don't have free range to the entire half acre......just enough to leave the coop and forage on about 75 sqft of grass/weeds. They want to get out of the run so bad. kinda funny