Getting started with free range birds on natural diets

[rod5591]

Hello All:

My wife and I are retiring. We are buying a place in the countryside (near a city) maybe south Indiana, Tenn, Ky, Arkansas and even Idaho, we are not sure yet. we are prepping our home for sale and after sold, will grab the best available place on the market. We hope we can move by January 1. We want a place zoned agricultural so we can have as many as we need--

We will be raising chickens for eggs and our own eating. No experience at all. My wife wants them to be "free range" chickens which eat bugs ect., and do not eat commercial feed with preservatives, soy or corn. She is into a strict, lechtin free, all organic diet She doesn't eat anything else and wants her chickens raised the same way. This poses a problem for food.... I've read about growing meal worms as food. Wonder if anyone can comment on natural chicken food and what we are letting ourselves in for taking this approach

I am trying to find a property with chicken coup already in it.

How many chickens do we need? I am guessing maybe 30? Some for laying and others for stew, Eating one per week on average. My brother has 4 chickens and he says they each give him an egg a day--all he and his wife needs. But they are more like pets.

Any suggestions? Breeds? numbers? Best place to buy? Costs?

For protection we plan to use our 3 year German Shepherd Dog to guard the chickens from predators during the day, and they will be in the coop at night. Hope the dog won't eat the chickens herself!

I am posting for feedback so I can get an idea of how to start the right way.

Assuming we can find an outbuilding we can use as a coop, how much will I need to invest in birds, wire, feeders, watering devices, etc? Does anyone have suggestions on being economical and minimizing expenditures?

My best to all, Rodger

 

[mesafox101]

best way to save money is buy feed from farmers not stores, you will want a rooster to protect them especially if they are free range also i would buy chicken that are already adults so they will have any easier time surviving + buy as much stuff as you can from farms and people who are selling them it saves money

 

[Folly's place]

Welcome! If you plan to raise chickens organically, it's likely that you will need to buy day-old chicks and raise them yourself, feeding organic chick starter, and an organic all- flock feed. Hopefully you can find a local source of a balanced feed with ingredients that meet her approval, because shipping costs will be $$$ if you have to order something.
Making a feed at home is not easy and will cost MORE than anything you can buy ready made, and chickens will not do well on scraps and scrounging around without a balanced base diet. Meal worms are extra, not a diet staple!
You have time to do the reading and develop a plan, which will be modified as you gain experience. It should be fun! Mary

 

[Mrs. K]

Different climates will make a big difference. I am in SD, and really chickens can only get enough bugs to eat here in June and July. Even by August, the bugs are old, no longer growing and are mostly chitin by then. They are not near enough protein.

There are ways you can supplement your feed, but the easiest way to keep your feed bill down is to reduce the number in your flock. I don't think you would need anywhere near 30 birds... or at least not 30 layers. Flocks are not static, but rather the number in them changes quite a bit. In the spring babies hatch, numbers rise, but the late fall, roosters need to be harvested, old layers culled, and reduce your numbers to the minimum.

In the summer in peak production, it is a good time to freeze extra eggs for winter time cooking. The number of eggs drastically decreases in the dark days of winter.

I would recommend you work into this step by step. There is a learning curve. I would look for a coop about 6 x 8, a good secure run around it. I would start with a hen only flock of 12 birds for the first year. Get them grown and laying, getting some experience.
Start new chicks the following spring, keep one of the roosters from those birds, letting him be raised in the flock. Then butcher a couple of the less productive birds, and then you cull and hatch. I believe it is Ridgerunner who supplies all her needs, and keeps less than a dozen layers.

The dog for protection might work, might not. Chickens are meat eaters too, and need a lot of protein to make those high protein eggs. I think it will be hard to meet their needs with your plan.

good luck

 

[centrarchid]

I lived in southern Indiana until my mid 20's. We kept lots of game chickens and a few dual purpose breeds similar to what you intend. Flocks were self sustaining and many of the game chickens were not fed any feeds at all. Productivity was extremely seasonal without additional management. If I had similar resources and intent, I would by a farm house with a barn suitable for keeping a couple feeder calves and a small number of hogs. Dog needs to live in barn or at least have easy access to it and visit barn frequently. Roosters needed for flock to protect birds. Breed of choice would be American Dominique. Chickens would be expected to roost in barn, ideally near larger animals. My preference is to keep chickens out of loft. Ideally, the acreage involved would be about 10 acres.

There is more to approach concerning how you manage foraging areas for chickens. I assume your flock is to be closed where all chicks produced are from adult you keep. Additionally, I would always keep a few backup hens and a rooster or two in a coop with run. Those could be managed more intensively for eggs. More than one flock can be kept on such a setup by providing discrete roosts and making it so they can go in roughly opposite directions for most of the day.

Dog will likely require a lot of work to get good around chickens.

 

[aart]

I would recommend you work into this step by step. There is a learning curve. I would look for a coop about 6 x 8, a good secure run around it. I would start with a hen only flock of 12 birds for the first year. Get them grown and laying, getting some experience.
Start new chicks the following spring, keep one of the roosters from those birds, letting him be raised in the flock. Then butcher a couple of the less productive birds, and then you cull and hatch.

Excellent start up population plan.
Except I'd go with a larger coop, walk in with room to segment space into main flock, grow-out, and storage.

Welcome to BYC @rod5591 !
The first year keeping chickens has a huge learning curve.
Reading a lot in all the subforums will help,
but you have to sort the info into 'fallacy' and 'fact'.
I found keeping notes and links in Word and Excel files to help greatly.

The feed thing is going to be very tricky.
Commercial feeds have all the vitamins/minerals/amino acids they need for nutrient uptake in good balance for optimal health and production. Not sure if the organic brands are totally lechtin free(funny that word is derived from Greek for 'egg yolk'), and most are corn based as far as I know, you may have to find a grain mill to formulate what you want and organic from a typical mill is rare. Depending on where you move, not using any commercial feeds and letting them 'live off the land' may allow them to survive, but they may not thrive. Organic from 'living off the land' is dicey too, as who knows what was grown on your land and was or is on adjacent land.

As to cost of set up, that's highly variable. Could be $100-1000 or more.
I built my coop in an existing building, coop and run came to about $800.
I maybe 'over-built' according to some but am glad I did,
as it made managing the birds much easier.

Cheers, Best of cLuck!

 

[chickens really]

..In reality, nutrition is key in raising heathy Chickens..Coops and runs are important due to many predators that will take a free meal and come back for more till all are gone...
Balanced feed is a must or production, health and behaviours fail....
More research needs to be done by your wife ...Chickens are easy, yet complex Birds..

Best wishes....

 

[centrarchid]

You will find the majority here do not hold much value in forages (what I assume you mean by natural foods). The overwhelming majority use complete diets whether formulated to be organic or not. As a result most people do not think in terms of how a forage base of insects and vegetative plants can be an extremely effective source of nutrition and is often first limiting for nutrients most abundant in starchy grains that are the least costly nutrients to supply. For such to work, you need good predator management and it can be done. Having other stock, particularly those that can be fed a little grains themselves can be a way to get more protein and other nutrients to birds through forage.

 

[Mrs. K]

Centrachid has the most experience with this than anyone else that I have seen post on this forum, and I have used several points of his advice. He has what I think is more of a farm type set up, vs a backyard set up.

I have the space, and probably the vegetation for part of this, and often times during the year, I have the other animals close by... but I have the predators unreal. I need a pretty sporadic free ranging, and pretty secure setup the rest of the time, or all I am doing is feeding the wild life.

Mrs K

 

[rod5591]

Thanks to everyone for the replies! We bought our place and we have the whole yard fenced ( chain link). There is a separate fenced area for the chickens. I have 5 roosters and 17 hens. The roosters are all Delaware’s. How many of those roosters will I need? There has been no predation yet. I keep my dogs away from the birds. Here are two of my roosters. They seem pretty mellow. They are about 11 weeks old.