If you're scared of free ranging chickens, GO FOR IT!

[ella2025]

Hi peeps!

I suck at writing, and don't know how to start, but here's my free ranging "story".

I got my first chicks from April 2 onwards. I now have some 21 week olds, some 19, some 10 week olds. Ive always been really afraid of losing my chickens to predators because I do have a lot of hawks and everything else that eats chickens around my area, so me and my father built a maximum security run and coop for them.


Up until today they were never let out of that run because I was so incredibly scared of losing some. This afternoon I was building another coop next to my current one with my dad, and he was like "let's let them out! I did that this morning and called them back easily." I was like YOU DID WHAT!? Despite being extremely nervous, I mustered the courage to let them out. They hung out and ate grass in the surrounding area near the coop. They go under the coop where they can't go thru their run, go eat stuff in some bushes, and never went farther than 10 yards away from the coop. If one chicken goes somewhere the flock isn't, I'll just walk behind her and she will have to go back where her flock is. After like 30 minutes of them wandering around eating grass and bugs, most of them went back in the run and I called the others back too. It was so much easier than I thought it would be. No predators showed up (that might change soon but I only do heavily supervised short free ranging sessions) and it was overall a very nice experience! Highly recommend and will do again.


Here are some photos!

 

[BlindLemonChicken]

My chickens are out all day every day and we have lots of predators. I am pretty vigilant about proactively keeping predators away from certain areas. I haven’t lost one yet though I’m sure I will. They have LOTS of cover but honestly I hate cleaning chicken coops and I hate keeping them in a run so I just stopped worrying about it. They go back to the coop at night by themselves and I lock them up. I still have to clean the coop but not nearly as often as if they were locked in it all day.

Here they are when they were still pretty little. I have a few older hens but they weren’t into hanging with the little ones. There are probably 8 chickens in this photo

 

[WingItRanch]

I remember the first time I let mine free range. I was also very nervous. I started like you, with short supervised time, but eventually started letting them out as soon as I got home from work until dusk. It's so rewarding watching them scratch and hunt for bugs. They seem so much happier! I feel it's worth the risk. I've had a close call with a hawk but the chickens get smarter at evasion as long as they have lots of cover.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

That is a beautiful splash EE rooster you have in your flock! Have you hatched any eggs out of him? You have a nice, varied flock. I wonder if you'd get sex-links if you hatched eggs from the Dominique hen? (At least, she looks like a Dom to me and not a BR, hard to tell on my phone.) Might be tricky to determine which eggs come from which hen, though, unless you have trap nests. Oh well.

 

[Tuuktuktuk]

That’s great to hear. Where I am the predators such as coyotes and raccoons only come out at night so I only have to worry about having them locked up at night. The hawks also will not prey on full grown chickens. have there been instances of hawks preying on full grown chickens in your area that make you think they’ll go after yours, or coyotes hunting in daylight?

 

[WingItRanch]

That’s great to hear. Where I am the predators such as coyotes and raccoons only come out at night so I only have to worry about having them locked up at night. The hawks also will not prey on full grown chickens. have there been instances of hawks preying on full grown chickens in your area that make you think they’ll go after yours, or coyotes hunting in daylight?

Hawks will most definitely hunt full grown chickens in the daytime. Do a quick search on this forum and you'll hear countless instances. As for coyotes, yes they will also hunt during the day if they're desperate.

Foxes are also daytime hunters.