Keeping Chickens Free Range

[islandgirl82]

Thanks, I will throw a Mike's in the fridge for you and see if I can get the EMT's and an ambulance to stand by...

Would you mind if I charge admission to others to this "Turkey Hen Wrassling" contest?

Make it a shandy and you've got yourself a deal. Messing with angry beast-moms is my favorite past time.

 

[duluthralphie]

I'd have to disagree with you there. I've been free ranging chickens for 40 yrs now and not just a few....large to medium flocks. All that time I've also had cats and never once has a cat attacked a chick or chicken. One set of half grown kittens was stalking one set of chicks and all I had to do was correct them, much as I would a dog, and that was the end of it. In fact, one of those kittens was killed on the highway but the other lived with us many years and I could call him to round up the adult chickens for me that had gotten out of the fence. He would round them up and chase them back over the gate, then lay down and look at me like he just had the best fun in the world. It's all about what kind of relationship you have with your cats and dogs that dictates how they react to what is yours.

Now, having said that, I wouldn't trust a strange, stray cat around the chicks at all and have had feral cats attempt to stalk adult chickens, even, but the dog soon put an end to that.

Didn't know there was a thread on free ranging or I would have posted sooner. I've been doing it for 40 yrs now and wouldn't keep chickens any other way. Minimal predator loss in all that time until this spring, when I lost newly hatched 20 chicks from 4 different broody hatches to black snakes....but all those chicks were inside shelter at the time of predation, so free ranging didn't have a thing to do with it, a black snake can get into any building it wants and the dogs will not hear it, see it or smell it doing so.

I've got some fine bird netting to place around the coop....snakes seem to get all tangled up in that stuff, which I found out by accident once, so now I'm going to use that knowledge to try and prevent it from happening next spring.

Is this your first post on this thread?

If it is welcome to the thread..

I bought the farm I grew up on, or what is left of it. We have two homes on the property. My mother lives in one house. She has a cat. I do not worry too much about her cat. It is too lazy and fat to walk all the way out to the sheds.

I actually like cats, however, I found I am allergic to them. We had one a few years ago that we would let out when it wanted. It was taken by an eagle. Eagles are by far my largest most troublesome predators and I am near helpless to do anything about them. Snakes are nearly non-existent here. I think they fear are winters.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

Oh no, my full grown birds coexist happily with the cats, but I have lost an entire flock of chicks to my own cats (those cats were dispatched of because once they get a taste of chicken they never stop). My chicks now enjoy a secure brooder room and a secure run. I use the cats to ensure other predators cannot enter because if a cat cannot get in, most predators cannot get in.

I have a large Tom that needs to go. He is completely feral and viscous. He is a danger to my farm cats and any weak bird I have, but he is the Dickens to catch. DH tried a couple weeks ago and killed the wrong cat, :/ .

They cannot in my world, I am not spending thousands to secure the buildings to the point no cat can get inside.  I have too many chicks, too many buildings, I will sleep better when the cat is taking an eternal nap. It works best for me. In addition if that cat visits other places with chickens around me they could spread disease.  BTW there is no such thing as the wrong cat in my world.

When I had my NPIP inspection one of the things they looked at was my predator control plan. I was told how a single predator could wipe me out. A feral cat is a predator.  What really torques me is the people from the city that cannot be responsible pet owners and dump their "kittens" out her in the country where the cats can live a "happy and free" live.  I am not allowed to live trap them, unfortunately.

We already had the barn, I just secured a "room", using scrap wood around the farm it only cost me the hardware cloth. But I had the space already. We need the cats, a small dog might manage it, but we have too much grain laying around and speaking strictly of costs, a bag of seed is worth more then my chicks. I do not blame you for not trusting the cats, and do not care what you do with this one. There are good and bad cats, but if they are not your cats I do not expect you to distinguish.

 

[Beekissed]

Yep, first post and thanks for the welcome!

My cats are all outdoors cats but we have trouble keeping them for long at this place...the resident foxes and coyote pack love a good cat snack. At my previous place I could keep them for much longer if they didn't get hit on the road. As with all things, it's all survival of the fittest outdoors.

People look at me funny when I say I want to start a cat breeding program here, as it's very hard to find replacement kittens when you need vermin control now that they have all these spay and neuter programs jammed down everyone's throats. Used to be a person could find kittens anywhere you look but they have become very scarce in these parts....pretty soon they will be on the endangered list if everyone stops allowing them to procreate.

 

[dekel18042]

Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a child we had chickens who raised their own peeps. We also lived in the country near an SPCA so people would dump their cats, often pregnant cats. My mother felt sorry for them and had a vet friend who would spay them as soon as possible. What she couldn't find homes for, we kept. Anyway, perhaps because these cats had been pets and continued on, they never bothered the babies. I think it had a lot to do with protective mother hens, but we incurred no loses.
Today my cats are house cats only but we do brood our peeps in the house and the cats show no more than a passing interest in them I've had cats napping on top of the brooder where it was warm. Up and down our rural road people have poultry and cats and barn cats who coexist.
Truly feral cats can be a different story.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

@Beekissed Welcome!

So the am loosing birds :/ I did an inventory and am down three layers. No indication that it is coming into the coop, so I assume it is while freeranging. I know my problem, I need a new dog. I love my old mutt but she is incapable of keeping up. I will just need to double down my efforts of finding her replacement and maybe find some kids willing to trap in the meantime. I am betting on the problem being a racoon.

 

[islandgirl82]

I have a Siamese cat who came from the shelter years ago. Great hunter. She even snuck a dead sparrow into my house once to leave on my pillow whilst I slept. Nothing like waking to the vacant stare of a dead bird on your pillow. I've brooded chicks in the house. There was one time she took an interest in them. One pecked her square in the nose while I held it. She never got close to the chicks again. I have a couple of hens who like to chase her so she keeps her distance from all of them.

I had been cat-sitting for an elderly woman in my town who needed someone to look after him for a couple of months. I let him outside once. He almost caught a full grown and rather robust SLW hen and I did not wait around to find out what he'd do if he actually overpowered her. I sprayed him with the garden hose then contacted the woman's family and said he wasn't welcome to stay anymore and he was removed.

Some cats are alright when it comes to who's fair game and who's off limits. Others just aren't.

 

[duluthralphie]

@Beekissed Welcome!

So the am loosing birds

I did an inventory and am down three layers. No indication that it is coming into the coop, so I assume it is while freeranging. I know my problem, I need a new dog. I love my old mutt but she is incapable of keeping up. I will just need to double down my efforts of finding her replacement and maybe find some kids willing to trap in the meantime. I am betting on the problem being a racoon.

Raccoons are the devils spawn!!!!

We have a friend, we meet her and her Hubby through BYC, she moved from the city to a country home on 5 acres this past spring so she could have more chickens and a more rural lifestyle. It is amazing what she has done in a short time.

I gave her a Turkey Tom (Porter, as a housewarming gift, my first turkey pictured on Porter's rare turkeys) she bought 3 hens to go with him. She has lost 2 of the three hens, a batch of poults , and came out to gather eggs to find a Raccoon in her coop that hissed and chased her out of the coop.

They found they have four living in the patch of woods around her property. She has managed to trap one, it failed barrel swimming class and drowned, poor thing. Here is what she sent me this morning:


I will need to edit to add the text..so give me a few seconds before quoting,,















woke up middle of night to allot of noise and commotion going on but couldn't see anything. This morning I found this. And no Porter and hen anywhere.
But they both came back this afternoon . The hen looks fine but Porter is beat up. Some blood on his side and missing allot of feathers. But he seems ok.
We figure he tried to protect hen and baby. Because he sleeps up in rafters and she has been sleeping on her nest. So he must have heard her and fought the raccoon






I would not trade my feral cats for one of her raccoons!

 

[Beekissed]

@Beekissed Welcome!

So the am loosing birds

I did an inventory and am down three layers. No indication that it is coming into the coop, so I assume it is while freeranging. I know my problem, I need a new dog. I love my old mutt but she is incapable of keeping up. I will just need to double down my efforts of finding her replacement and maybe find some kids willing to trap in the meantime. I am betting on the problem being a racoon.

Though my older dog would never allow a raccoon to live, he was ignoring hawks and he's too friendly to stray dogs and has always been, so I got him a younger working partner last fall and have been training him to be around chickens~VERY easy, took a couple of corrections only~and humans~still training on that one....he still gets overly excited around new people and just wants to be loved, loved, loved...all the time.

Though Jake has been an excellent chicken dog for the past 10 yrs, I started him out as a partner to my other working dog, and though she was doing fine on her own as well....sometimes an aging dog just needs some rest in the day after guarding all night. They are less open to greeting other dogs if they have their own pack~even if it's just two dogs~and they can take turns being on guard, which works much better than one dog trying to keep track of 30+ chickens roaming all over 3-5 acres of meadow and woodland.

It's well worth it to get that extra pup and put in the training time. If you get the right breed and start them out at a young age right with the chickens, it seems to take very minimal training to get their minds off the chickens as prey. I've been really tickled with the last two pups I've trained on chickens and both have been a huge asset to my homestead. The previous two chicken dogs came to me as adults and seemed already trained on livestock, so I was blessed with those dogs as well.

 

[OrganicFarmWife]

My pups biggest issue is she was hit by a pickup. She managed to maintain despite being down to three legs for almost three years, but summertime has always been the worst time of year for her. I have been looking for a new pup since this spring, but dh keep being very picky. I am just going to have to out vote him. Right now we have two, and the second dog is still in fighting form, but he is undependable for staying in the yard and prefers to follow dh and FIL while farming.