Keeping Chickens Free Range

[vpatt]

I will have to gently bring up the subject of guineas...lol. But i never mentioned them before. When i was planning on chickens a couple of years ago he volunteered that guineas were too loud. Hmmmmm.......i will have to think on this.

 

[duluthralphie]

I will have to gently bring up the subject of guineas...lol. But i never mentioned them before. When i was planning on chickens a couple of years ago he volunteered that guineas were too loud. Hmmmmm.......i will have to think on this.

He is right a flock of guineas is fearless.. They will attack anything. When they change leaders in their flock they dispose of the old leader. It is not pretty to watch. They area flock but they have some gang behavior. Your smaller predators would never attempt to take on guineas, if the noise did not scare them away the beating they would get would ....

With Guineas you need young ones and to lock them up quite a while to teach them were home is...I have tried adults but they never seem to stick around... As a bonus the woodtick, population would drop dramatically. You would not find another potato bug, or cabbage worms/moths. They go through the garden picking off the pests.

 

[vpatt]

Thanks Ralphie!

 

[SmColorInDaPan]

With Guineas you need young ones and to lock them up quite a while to teach them were home is...I have tried adults but they never seem to stick around... As a bonus the woodtick, population would drop dramatically. You would not find another potato bug, or cabbage worms/moths. They go through the garden picking off the pests.

Bet they don't leave much GARDEN??!!!

Wish I would of known that when chicks were being sold. Course, might of lost my Mini Bantam Roo by now...
We're due for another cold snap, haul trough into house, Lil ones aren't lil any more, having a BLAST outside. They seem to follow my 1 mature hen, then Roo picks on them when they feed off her/public food pile. Normal, I think, Pack, leader mentality. Cheap bread in hand, I'm the hero...

 

[lazy gardener]

Bet they don't leave much GARDEN??!!!

Wish I would of known that when chicks were being sold. Course, might of lost my Mini Bantam Roo by now...
We're due for another cold snap, haul trough into house, Lil ones aren't lil any more, having a BLAST outside. They seem to follow my 1 mature hen, then Roo picks on them when they feed off her/public food pile. Normal, I think, Pack, leader mentality. Cheap bread in hand, I'm the hero...

My roo loves his babies. I show him a chick, and he comes marching over to the fence, starts clucking to it, and tid-bitting.

 

[SmColorInDaPan]

My roo loves his babies. I show him a chick, and he comes marching over to the fence, starts clucking to it, and .

My Roo & Chicks are No relation. I think it's adorable the chicks 'hang out' with my older hen, gaining Experience on how to be 'grown up'.

 

[SmColorInDaPan]

I will have to gently bring up the subject of guineas...lol. But i never mentioned them before. When i was planning on chickens a couple of years ago he volunteered that guineas were too loud. Hmmmmm.......i will have to think on this.

My husband was stationed At a VERY Rural cabin like structure when he worked for the Federal forestry service. He had 2 geese, Pitch, as in what some pine trees have, & Cowlick. They weren't allowed dogs. He said they make great alarms for when someone came up the drive.

Followed him around... Course he's famous for OVER giving treats to ANY animals he keeps..

 

[BrushyHillGuide]

Quote:
Everything goes great, until it doesn't. I got away with free-ranging my flock for just over a year. Then, one day come home to find 9 out of 11 gone. All that was left was piles of different colored feathers all over the yard. The fox showed up around here. Took him awhile, but he got here. 650' of electrified poultry net was the answer for me.

We let ours out in the morning and they have the run of our 24 acres and the 90+ acres of south Texas brush we border. We've got coyotes, bobcats, grey fox, raccoons, hawks, turkey buzzards and caracaras. Still, we've only lost 3 birds over the past year; and all of them disappeared within the first couple months they free ranged. We lost pullets. Once the others saw their buddies get killed, and matured themselves, the disappearances quit. We have 19 pullets now that we're keeping confined until they're about 16-18 weeks old and integrated with all 4 of our current laying hens. Every situation is different, I guess. Luckily, we have 4 big dogs that run around quite a bit and we do quite a bit of target practice shooting in our property. This makes our predators a little more wary during daylight hours. But, we fully expect that we'll lose some of these pullets to predators - we're over-buying to account for the losses we KNOW we'll suffer. Hopefully we'll end up with 14-15 smart and educated layers that will know how to avoid predators in the daytime. Our coop is pretty predator resistant. It helps that I hunt and trap predators for part of my livelihood. So, I do kill some around the house and I'm probably more equipped to evaluate and deal with the predators that we do have around here. That's how we do it, anyway.

 

[BrushyHillGuide]

Do you guys free range your chickens when you are away from home for a few hours or for the day? I've only had my flock a couple of weeks (they're about 22 weeks old), and if I know I'm going out that day I wait until I get back to let them out. There was just one time I went out unexpectedly for a couple of hours and didn't put them back (they are hard to catch during the day and have too many good hiding spots under dense foliage). So I took my chances and left. All were there when I returned. Plus yesterday we spent several hours down the back of our farm cutting firewood so we were effectively out as we have 84 acres and 'down the back' is nearly a kilometre away (3 miles?).

Just wondering what others do. We are in Australia, so the only predators we really have to worry about is foxes and wedge tailed eagles. The chooks have good tree cover so I'm less worried about the eagles, more so about the foxes.

The peacock we used to have survived here 8 years before it got sick and died, and I've never seen a fox near the house, if that helps ( though I'm sure they're there and have seen them down the road)

I meant to quote this (above) post in my reply. Sorry for confusion - can't find an "edit" button in Tapatalk on these forums, so im making this additional post


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[MountainPea]

We let ours out in the morning and they have the run of our 24 acres and the 90+ acres of south Texas brush we border. We've got coyotes, bobcats, grey fox, raccoons, hawks, turkey buzzards and caracaras. Still, we've only lost 3 birds over the past year; and all of them disappeared within the first couple months they free ranged. We lost pullets. Once the others saw their buddies get killed, and matured themselves, the disappearances quit. We have 19 pullets now that we're keeping confined until they're about 16-18 weeks old and integrated with all 4 of our current laying hens.

Every situation is different, I guess. Luckily, we have 4 big dogs that run around quite a bit and we do quite a bit of target practice shooting in our property. This makes our predators a little more wary during daylight hours. But, we fully expect that we'll lose some of these pullets to predators - we're over-buying to account for the losses we KNOW we'll suffer. Hopefully we'll end up with 14-15 smart and educated layers that will know how to avoid predators in the daytime. Our coop is pretty predator resistant.

It helps that I hunt and trap predators for part of my livelihood. So, I do kill some around the house and I'm probably more equipped to evaluate and deal with the predators that we do have around here.

That's how we do it, anyway.

Thanks for the reply. It would no doubt help that you have the dogs, I imagine they ward off anything that's not welcome. We sometimes look after my dad's dog while he travels and I have heard her chase things in the middle of the night. At the moment we're just taking our chances but I'm investigating our options. Electrified chicken netting seems like a good idea for us. Our chicken coop is within a paddock near the house so we could set up a net around the coop. This is our coop, or "The chook shed" as we call it (last photo taken a while ago before we got rain, and my daughter is bald due to chemo):