If chickens roam...

[ebonykawai]

...will they come back home? Or are they like my defective rat terrier, who used to try and run away and get lost 200ft from home?

:

Also, how hard are chicken to catch and/or herd back to where they are supposed to play? We have a very low fence (for the dogs; it's only 3ft high, green wire thing) surrounding most of my property, wide open fields all around, and a busy road about 300ft from where their coop will be. I plan to have a big enclosed run, but I want to let them out, supervised, to weed the garden and hang out doing chicken things for a couple hours a day. Am I setting myself up, LOL?

 

[rooster-red]

My always come back with no problem.

 

[Justino]

Quote:
same here...but i only have 7 on a quarter acre so...yeah

 

[Charlie Chicken]

After your chickens have spent some time in confinement and have learned where "home" is they will have a natural instinct to return at dusk. If you let them out to run and want them to return to their pen sooner then there will probably be times when it will be difficult to get them to go in. Sometimes herding chickens works and sometimes it doesn't. It's much easier to wait until dusk and let them return home by themselves.

 

[ebonykawai]

Great, thank you! I was just worried that they might wander towards the road, which is all the way on the other side of my house and can't be seen from the coop, and that I would have a problem keeping them away from it. It's a good 300 ft from the coop and pretty much out of site. The only way to it is to really hike around the house.

Chickens don't make mad dashes, do they? Do they pretty much just mill about like cows do, grazing and gradually going in a direction, or do they suddenly think "Yikes, I'm out of here!!" and bolt like a runaway dog?

 

[Charlie Chicken]

Chickens will usually stay pretty close to their home (coop) where they feel safe. They will act exactly as you say and "pretty much just mill about like cows do, grazing and gradually going in a direction.'