Pellet vs Free Range/Foraging

[Shadrach]

To have a robust flock of maybe 21 head of adult gamefowl with room to reproduce? 2-3 acres. Generally they stay within 200 yards of their primary roost 24/7 year round. For most of the year they stay within 100 yards of their roost. If you want to double the flock size to around 50 and ensure you have all the stragglers contained with a boundary they never cross, call it 5 acres.

If you’re talking about hatchery-bred chickens of commercial breeds, they’ll wander all the way across my 40 acres until they get caught by a predator. Except for the leghorns. They act very much like gamefowl in staying close to home and acting like they have sense.

Edited: the gamefowl never go 200 yards in one direction. It would be more accurate to say they stay within a 100 yard radius of their roost. I don’t think they ever go further than 150 yards in one direction. So actually they stay within a 200-300 yard diameter with their roost being center.

The layers will in fact go 250 yards in one direction.

I estimated an acre per tribe in Catalonia as a territory. A tribe could be a breeding pair plus offspring. There were no fences that would contain chickens so they have an entire National Park at their disposal. My usual range distance tallies with yours (I have to convert everything to metric)
More tribes meant pushing out into unclaimed territory. 4 tribes used about 4 acres. But, these were not gamefowl. They were French Marans brought in from France (free rangers) and Bantams with mostly English Game genes.

In the UK with over 500 free rangers mixed sex single breed, eight acres was about the limit. As each new generation hatched and grew there would be occasional groups that would push out further than the norm but as you noted, predation risks increased.

On my uncles farm four or five tribes lived on about 5 acres and didn't show any inclination to wander away from their territories.

I should point out that in all the above some commercial feed was supplied.

 

[3KillerBs]

Please, no one here think I dislike anyone just because I’m debating you hard. People ought to be able to clash over ideas without personal hostility. That’s how ideas are tested. They have to stand up to hard challenge.

Yes, definitely.

3killerBs check my edit. I clarified the yardage information. Later this evening I may post up an areal of my farm and show the gamefowl’s territory.

That would be interesting to see.

Our 3 acres are weirdly-shaped -- like a badly-cut pie. It would be challenging to site a coop 150-200 yards from all property boundaries.

 

[3KillerBs]

so they have an entire National Park at their disposal.

In most of the US east of the Mississippi (eastern and western states *generally* fall on different sides of the farmers vs ranchers divide -- local and state laws may vary), and certainly in the state where I reside, it would be illegal to allow your animals to range on public lands.

 

[U_Stormcrow]

To have a robust flock of maybe 21 head of adult gamefowl with room to reproduce? 2-3 acres. Generally they stay within 200 yards of their primary roost 24/7 year round. For most of the year they stay within 100 yards of their roost. If you want to double the flock size to around 50 and ensure you have all the stragglers contained with a boundary they never cross, call it 5 acres.

If you’re talking about hatchery-bred chickens of commercial breeds, they’ll wander all the way across my 40 acres until they get caught by a predator. Except for the leghorns. They act very much like gamefowl in staying close to home and acting like they have sense.

Edited: the gamefowl never go 200 yards in one direction. It would be more accurate to say they stay within a 100 yard radius of their roost. I don’t think they ever go further than 150 yards in one direction. So actually they stay within a 200-300 yard diameter with their roost being center.

The layers will in fact go 250 yards in one direction.

These foraging distances are pretty consistent with my experience in the FL Panhandle, though my math computes different acreages...

I set my barn and their houses in the middle of the "pasture" and set electric fence (roughly) equidistant roughly 250 ft (80y+/-) around it, enclosing about 5 acres (I didn't always trailblaze straight), of which roughly 2a is "pasture" and the other 3a virgin wood. Most of my birds are hatchery stock "dual purpose" or the descendants of same, and most of the time most of the birds are inside the fence. A few do wander further, but only in one direction - for whatever reason.

My flock size is a bit larger, I've topped out just under 100 bird "units" (in that ducks eat more). The best I've done at height of season is about a 35% reduction in feed costs - and a couple times I've butchered birds to find them fatter than desired - but those times were after I threw 100+ pound of seed at the ground in efforts to improve the pasture. Consistently, they found - and consumed - most of it, even when I offered them "extra" feed as inducement to leave the seed alone.

Note that 200y in any direction (so 1200 ft from edge to edge) is larger than my 30 acre plot. A 300y radius circle is closer to 60 acres.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

My farm is 40 acres. It runs from the wood line in the west all the way to the road in the east, north to the woodline and south a ways into the woods. The wood block in the NW corner is mine as is the strip of woods in the east. The circular layers in the first pic denote a 100 yard radius for scale, centered on one of the primary roosts.

In the second pic the yellow circle is where the game chickens stay. Basically my yard. With that circular area they mostly say around the round pond. The pond is about .6 of an acre and is their primary water source. They roost on the north end of the pond. Around most of the pond are layers of bushes and trees that form a canopy on the north end and lots of cover on the east end. There is leaf litter under the trees and bushes.

The red stripes are danger zones where the bobcat and coyotes have caught guineas, layers, and turkeys. My last flock of factory layers would travel the bottom danger zone and meet me at the gate when I’d come home in the afteroons. The gamefowl do not travel the danger zones, except that in the height of blueberry season in June they’ll go about 100 yards at the most out into the blueberries in the east.

The blue box is a section of blueberries I recently put electric wire on for my cows and the gamefowl are now utilizing the paddock. They are quick to learn where they are safe better than other chickens learn.

 

[Morrigan]

All I was trying to find out is if I'm harming my flock inadvertently by letting them forage, since many, many folks report that not feeding solely balanced commercial feed is contributing to the problems and losses my flock is experiencing. I don't even care about egg production at the moment. I just want my chickens and ducks to stop dying.

Thanks, y'all, but I'm out. I rather regret asking in the first place.

Please don't regret asking. What to feed chickens seems to be a topic for which people hold varying and, at time, strong opinions. Despite the conflicts, I think there have been a lot of good viewpoints and information presented here, and I've found it interesting reading.

As to your original question, I do not think you free-ranging your flock is at cause of your chickens dying, unless there is some odd chemical or toxin they are getting into. Although it hasn't been much discussed, I believe that the mental and physical stimulation of free ranging is a huge positive in a chicken's overall health.

Your original post mentioned fodder. I've been growing and feeding fodder to my flock for the past 7 years. About 1 1/2 cups/day of various grains, measured dry, for anywhere between 15 and 30 chickens. I also give table scraps, garden surplus, plus whatever bugs and weeds they can find in the yard. Commercial feed always available. I feel satisfied with the health of my flock.

I hope you can figure out what is up with your hens. Sometimes with hatchery stock, as your flock ages, you may go through a spell where 2 or 3 seem to die all at once -- but then you can go years without losing anyone. Reproductive problems are, unfortunately, quite common among today's high production breeds, and some losses are to be expected even if you do everything right.

 

[raingarden]

Read about Old English gamefowl as they were historically kept in England from pre-Roman times through the early 1900s.

I'd like to read that if you ever come across the citation again.

 

[raingarden]

To have a robust flock of maybe 21 head of adult gamefowl with room to reproduce? 2-3 acres.

That's about 5,000 square feet per chicken..... again. Thank you.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

I'd like to read that if you ever come across the citation again.

https://books.google.com/books?id=P...XUsYQIHSagC8sQ6wF6BAgIEAU#v=onepage&q&f=false

There’s one I have on hand and I’ll pull some more this evening. This one doesn’t got into detail on specifically winter raising but it more generally talks about them taking care of themselves in chapter 6 via foraging.

 

[Geena]

because most of you in the naysayer camp are doubting that chickens can forage for themselves without major human intervention even in the rich, warm, months.

I don't think anyone is naysaying chickens foraging for themselves, only that it's not possible for everyone to raise chickens in this manner everywhere.

You say Florida is one of the harshest places in the country to farm, so of course I had to go look.
https://www.fdacs.gov/Agriculture-Industry/Florida-Agriculture-Overview-and-Statistics#:~:text=In 2020 Florida ranked first,corn; and fourth in peanuts.

Florida’s 47,400 farms and ranches utilize 9.7 million acres and continue to produce a wide variety of safe and dependable food products. From the citrus groves and the nurseries in Central and South Florida, to the vegetables in various regions around the state, to the cattle and calves throughout the state, these farms and ranches provide Florida with a large and stable economic base. In 2020 Florida ranked first in the United States in the value of production for oranges, sugarcane, fresh market tomatoes and watermelons; second in the value of production for strawberries; third in cabbage, grapefruit and fresh market sweet corn; and fourth in peanuts.

Can't be all that bad.

My last flock of factory layers would travel the bottom danger zone and meet me at the gate when I’d come home in the afteroons. The gamefowl do not travel the danger zones,

I wonder if that is behavioral or because they need to range further to meet their nutritional requirements or a combination of both?