How dangerous is free ranging?

[eggdd]

it's a valid question to ask. but so is: how mean is it to keep your chickens locked up? some may say that one day of an actual life is better than no life at all.

chickens have free ranged......forever. they haven't always had bored housewives to put sweaters on them and cook them meals. might you lose one? sure. but at least the poor thing got to live life as a chicken.

 

[Illia]

Yep, I'd rather free range/pasture mine than coop it up in some dirt/gravel run.

I've had my birds either freely ranging the place or in a 3 acre fenced and very wild looking pasture for 3 years now and only lost 2 birds. (out of over 100 I've had, half of them the same birds I had when I first began) One of them I could have stopped if I knew the hen was broody out in the back of the pasture towards the neighbor's forest. But, a raccoon beat me to it.

 

[pgpoultry]

With regards to predators, we have generally only the light weights' with foxes being the main hazard ( and occasionally ravens for small chicks). We have buzzards and red kites as aerial predators, but they never trouble my chickens. We also have weasels and pole cats on the ground.

I have free ranged my chickens ever since I have kept them, and the only time that we lost any was when hubby forgot to shut the coops at night (6 hens taken). At that time we had never seen or noticed the smell of foxes, but clearly Mr or Mrs Fox was doing their nightly round.

On several occasions a solitary chicken has not come back to the coop at night and they have always shown up in the morning.

For the reasons above, I feel relatively confident about free ranging.