Heritage Large Fowl - Phase II

[finnfur]

Well determining sex in embryo stage is progress but even now the male might be better off than the battery hens that are confined to cage for 1>2 years and culled.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

Well determining sex in embryo stage is progress but even now the male might be better off than the battery hens that are confined to cage for 1>2 years and culled.

Ok this is really neat. Supposed to be available to the public by 2017.
http://www.arbiternews.com/2015/04/04/breakthrough-could-make-your-eggs-a-little-less-cruel/
Best,
Karen

Finnfur, The elephant in the room, for sure. Unfortunately some of those "free run" farms aren't much better.
There's some other technology being worked on, an egg sniffer : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4309571/

 

[finnfur]

Finnfur, The elephant in the room, for sure. Unfortunately some of those "free run" farms aren't much better.
There's some other technology being worked on, an egg sniffer : http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4309571/

Just expressing observations - I am not anti farm etc as long as its humane -

Talking free range eggs. The other day I was watching one of the discovery[?] channels and the had a entire show on EGGS - history and production. They showed legal free range terminology but had one farmer in CA that was truly free range with mobile coops and spacious free range pastures. Don't know when it was made but he was getting $9.00 dozen for his eggs and had a constant over 30 day waiting list for customers that dropped out.
It was very educational.

 

[hellbender]

Just expressing observations - I am not anti farm etc as long as its humane -

Talking free range eggs. The other day I was watching one of the discovery[?] channels and the had a entire show on EGGS - history and production. They showed legal free range terminology but had one farmer in CA that was truly free range with mobile coops and spacious free range pastures. Don't know when it was made but he was getting $9.00 dozen for his eggs and had a constant over 30 day waiting list for customers that dropped out.
It was very educational.

I personally do NOT consider the use of 'tractors' to be anything remotely near 'free-ranging'.

 

[Wisher1000]

Hellbender - If Finnfur and I are thinking of the same program, the housing for the birds consists of covered wagons outfitted with roosts and nest boxes. They have food and water accessible from the ground, and ramps for the chickens to get in and out of the coop. They move the coop with a truck to a new area of the fields every few days and the birds simply sleep and lay in the wagon but free range on sweet ground on a rotation schedule. It was pretty neat.

Similar to this pic I found online.

 

[hellbender]

Hellbender - If Finnfur and I are thinking of the same program, the housing for the birds consists of covered wagons outfitted with roosts and nest boxes. They have food and water accessible from the ground, and ramps for the chickens to get in and out of the coop. They move the coop with a truck to a new area of the fields every few days and the birds simply sleep and lay in the wagon but free range on sweet ground on a rotation schedule. It was pretty neat.

Similar to this pic I found online.

Now...this is a whole 'nother story. I'm thinking of 'tractors' being something like 8 X 12 or something to that effect that are moved perhaps everyday. NOT free ranging.

What I see in your pic would absolutely be free-ranging...even if they had a very large electrified poultry netting fence that was moved on a regular basis.

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

Now...this is a whole 'nother story. I'm thinking of 'tractors' being something like 8 X 12 or something to that effect that are moved perhaps everyday. NOT free ranging.

What I see in your pic would absolutely be free-ranging...even if they had a very large electrified poultry netting fence that was moved on a regular basis.

I always find the language a little fuzzy. When people ask me if my birds are "free range," I have to give them a long-ish answer. We have coops, we have some fences, we sometimes have the birds behind the fence, we sometimes don't, we sometimes have fabulous lush pastures, other seasons we don't, some of the birds prefer to hang out indoors, others like to travel surprisingly far ... " blah blah blah.

Some people say "entirely free range" when they mean "day ranged;" or "pastured" can mean anything from entirely free ranged to day ranged, to tractored ... unless it's industrial poultry where words have other meanings.

I like @finnfur 's "Gypsy Chickens" description. I get exactly the mental picture of what it is ... a nifty self-contained Wagon Camp situation. It makes me want to copy his setup so I can offer such a tidy answer.

 

[CanadianBuckeye]

It would be an interesting study to find out how chickens can recognize "home" when it's moved around in a completely free range situation. I wonder how far you could move it without them getting lost, or if they focus entirely on the coop, and not the geography?

 

[LeslieDJoyce]

It would be an interesting study to find out how chickens can recognize "home" when it's moved around in a completely free range situation. I wonder how far you could move it without them getting lost, or if they focus entirely on the coop, and not the geography?

Salatin says if you don't have enough space to move the chickens far enough from "home base" when you start the Gypsy Chicken thing, they'll just walk back to home base at roosting time ... unless there's a fence. He says something like 100 acres confuses them enough so they consider the wagon home base, I think. I'd have to double check. I'd think it would depend on a lot of things besides pure distance, like line of sight. And fences.

Though some of my birds just laugh at my fences.

 

[finnfur]

Now...this is a whole 'nother story. I'm thinking of 'tractors' being something like 8 X 12 or something to that effect that are moved perhaps everyday. NOT free ranging.

What I see in your pic would absolutely be free-ranging...even if they had a very large electrified poultry netting fence that was moved on a regular basis.

Yep - not sure thats the one but thats how it looked and they were trailers. My coops are on trailers and my gypsy hens move around with Enet for predator protection.
see avatar. The guy in CA was much larger scale with farm trailers like shown.They don't work for me because we are hill country and I need to be able to jack the tongue to keep trailer/coop fairly level.