Questions about wild chickens

[pjcalvo]

I have on an average close to 100 chickens right now that show up at various times of the day. i am interested in a small coop or laying boxes to collect eggs. we live on an island and are prone to hurricanes. any suggestions as to what is best (coop or just laying boxes)?
the chickens are wild - although since i feed them regularly and provide them with fresh water, our back yard seems to be the new hot spot or soup kitchen for them. some will now take a bit of food from my hand.

i should say i only want to keep a couple hens

 

[off-grid hen]

Just a couple, huh? Once the hundred or so that are already in your yard tell their buddies, watch out!

Do you mean to catch a few and separate them by fencing them in, or do you mean to just put some food out and have them free range? If you provide food, nests, and shelter for a few in an open space, you may have lots more move in. Maybe some will lay in the nest boxes, but im assuming some will still lay in the old preferred spots. So you could feed them and they might travel to lay, which would be counter-productive. The flip side of that being that they could free range all day, eating very little of the food you provide, but lay in your nest boxes. Wouldn't that be great! But it doesn't sound likely.

I have no advice here, but I, subscribing to this post because it's an interesting topic. I wish I had wild chickens roaming around!

 

[pjcalvo]

we have a hen who laid 13 eggs under our deck, 11 hatched she seems content in the yard and the babies are just the cutest things ever. i also now have an older chick in the house who was left behind due to a leg injury. i'm going to work on a coop to keep 3 or 4 hens and then after a month i'll remove the yard section and just keep the laying boxes - hopefully that will work. i have to say, we had friends over and they were shocked at the number of chickens that show up during the day to eat. i guess that's what happens when you feed them - we're now running a soup kitchen for all the homeless chickens on the island