Landrace/adaptive breeding discussion

[BlindLemonChicken]

Side note since I never updated about what got my Lavender Orpington: I did catch something in the trap but it wasn’t what I thought I would catch—it was a possum. I guess in the mess I mistook the possum print for a raccoon because I’ve never seen a possum track before. The one I caught didn’t look big enough to haul off a full grown Orpington but I installed another camera inside the barn so next time there should be more evidence. I have always heard possums will kill chickens but I’ve never experienced it. I was bummed to have to exterminate the poor guy cause I like possums but he was in a paw trap and there’s no setting them loose after that. Not because his paw was damaged but I wasn’t getting close enough to do it. Also, killing chickens is not a releasing offense.

 

[LaurenRitz]

Sorry I am interjecting with an old topic, but I just happened upon this comment as I am considering letting some broodies hatch eggs in the spring with minimal intervention. Just curious Perris, where was your hens' successful hatching location? Did the hens sit in the woods, in a bush, somewhere else? And where did the unsuccessful hatches happen and how early/late in the hatch were the eggs predated?

Also does anyone else happen to have any stories of successful outdoor broody hatches? Or unsuccessful ones?

I've had a bunch go broody. My only current broody goes broody twice a year and has always laid in the coop, in one of the nesting boxes. She's the only one who has successfully raised chicks.

Others have laid under trees, in tall grass, in a bag of old leaves, etc. Each time there has been an outside nest, snakes got the eggs, usually toward the end of the incubation period. It might have been hatching eggs that attracted them.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

S

Sorry I am interjecting with an old topic, but I just happened upon this comment as I am considering letting some broodies hatch eggs in the spring with minimal intervention. Just curious Perris, where was your hens' successful hatching location? Did the hens sit in the woods, in a bush, somewhere else? And where did the unsuccessful hatches happen and how early/late in the hatch were the eggs predated?

Also does anyone else happen to have any stories of successful outdoor broody hatches? Or unsuccessful ones?

If you look back in the thread, I document the hens that brood totally free range without my intervention. I get about 12-16 broods late spring that way and some of those hens do second broods in the summer. Zero major predations during brooding over the course of several years. They have the sense to brood within a 2 acre farmyard area patrolled by my free-range dogs. Can be in weeds, under bushes, in farm equipment, designated nest boxes. Wherever. No losses during that time except to snakes. Grey rat snakes are hell on eggs and chicks. The height of brooding season here is June and I kill as many as a dozen grey rat snakes within that month at night raiding under the hens. Last couple of years haven’t been as bad. I think I’ve thinned them out.

Predations from birds of prey and mammals don’t seriously start until the hens are walking with the chicks. Survival rate to adulthood can be as high as 100% and as low as none, and anything in between. Some of the chicks can tree roost as early as 2-3 weeks. Some a lot longer. Some hens mostly ween their chicks off of them at a month. Others stat close to them a lot more. The hotter and drier it is, the better the chicks do on their own earlier.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I think the youngest chicks that have been weened early and made it were 2 weeks. I recall that being during a dry spell. They roosted in a fig tree and didn’t get rained on at night.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Note the times. What may have happened here was that something spooked the chickens and my dog responded. She’ll react to spook calls by the chickens from as far away as she can hear them. She can recognize whether the alert is on an arial predator or not. If she recognizes it as a hawk alert, she goes charging in with her eyes sky and treeward.