Here's a few thoughts on the matter of free-ranging, from good old Bob Plamondon. See what you think...
"1. Do I have to feed free-range chickens, or can they find their own feed?
Chickens can find their own feed, but each chicken needs a lot of room if this is going to work. Also, chickens that live entirely by foraging have to have their population adjusted regularly to match the feed supply.
For example, a farmer of 100 years ago might have kept a dozen hens and a rooster through the winter, and allowed the hens to hatch a brood of chicks each in the spring, giving, say, 72 chicks plus the original 13 chickens, or 85 birds total. The old rooster would be sold after the chicks had hatched.
The old hens and most of the young chickens would be sold in the fall, and one cockerel and twelve pullets would be kept through the lean months. By having 85 chickens during the fat months and only 13 during the winter, the amount of supplemental feed needed by the chickens would be minimized. A flock of 13 chickens might survive all winter on the grain spilled by a cow and a team of draft horses, plus some hay and whatever else they could find. This winter diet would be nutritionally poor (both vitamin- and protein-deficient) and the hens would lay few eggs, but they'd recover in early spring and the cycle would repeat.
Nutritional deficiencies increase with the number of chickens. I've heard estimates that you can support 1-2 hens per acre with no supplemental feeding, though probably not during the winter.
As you add chickens to the farm, they first exhaust the supply of high-calorie feeds such as seeds, then the supply of high-protein feeds such as bugs, worms, and high-protein forage. Finally, they use up the supply of high-vitamin feeds such as grass. Modern poultrykeeping revolves around supplying the nutrients the chickens can't find for themselves.
In the good old days, when people didn't feed their hens at all, much of the hen's diet was provided by sheer sloppiness. People threw their garbage out into the street or the barnyard. The cows and horses spilled grain. Manure was everywhere and was full of yummy maggots. Even with all the natural bounty provided by Stone Age sanitation, the number of hens that could be supported without supplemental feeding was very limited. Flocks of over fifty hens were unusual before chicken feed was invented.
In practice, though, it always pays to provide a complete diet, compared to feeding nothing at all or supplying nothing but grain.
The increased production always pays for the increased feed bill.
2. What Should I Feed My Chickens?
Chicken feed. People like to complicate the feeding issue beyond all reason. Buy a sack of feed that's labeled for the kind of chickens you have (chick starter, broiler starter, layer feed, etc.). This will be a balanced feed, and the chickens will do fine if you don't feed them anything else.
For my hens, I use the three-bin feeder system. I have one feeder full of 19% protein "All Purpose Poultry" pellets, one feeder full of whatever whole grain is cheapest (usually corn), and one feeder full of oystershell. You can replace the "All Purpose Poultry" ration with a high-protein layer ration if that suits you.
The reason I do this is that chickens have a definite calcium appetite (oystershells), energy appetite (grain), and protein appetite (high-protein poultry ration). A hen who lays an egg a day will eat far more calcium than one who lays an egg a week. If the only source of calcium is the chicken feed, she will eat feed just for its calcium, and get fat. With calcium offered on the side in the form of oystershell, she can eat the calcium she wants without unwanted calories. Similarly, a hen who is not laying at the moment wants little calcium or protein, and will eat mostly grain, which is cheaper than the other ingredients.
Furthermore, forage is high in protein. When the pasture plants are bright green and succulent, or when there are lots of slow-moving bugs and worms around, the hens get a lot of protein by foraging, turn up their noses at the pellets, and eat mostly forage and whole grain. When the pasture plants turn brown and the insects move too fast, they fall back on the pellets.
For pullet chicks, I feed chick starter for several weeks, then offer grain in a separate feeder. Once the chicks go onto pasture, they get the same ration as the hens.
Broiler chicks start with a 22% broiler starter, graduate to a 20% broiler grower ration, which is later supplemented with whole grains.
Turkeys are similar to broilers: start with a 28% turkey starter, graduate to a 20% broiler grower, which is later supplemented with whole grains.
All my poultry also have access to range."
Bob doesn't hide, he is easy to find at plamondon.com. Check him out.
