raising wild chicks

[PepsNick]

Sounds fun! If I lived in Hawaii there would be none left! LOL

 

[D'Angelo N Va.]

I think it's a do able thing. They might take a little longer to warm up, but in the end it will be worth it. Go for it. It's like in Key West, Fl. all of those wild chicks walking around.....some make it, some don't. I would be there with traps always trying to catch them to keep for my own..but then I guess there wouldn't be any wild ones to look at for tourists coming..

 

[nubbin]

I also live on Big Island (Hilo) and we see the same attrition with feral chicks around our house. We managed to catch a very young chick (probaby 2 days old) from a feral mom. We've had 'her' now for about 5 weeks. She will free range around the yard with us staying close and we can easily pick her up, place in her the coop. etc. The female feral chickens we see around the yard are often solo so we didn't worry too much about her being alone, but once she was old enough to go in the outside coop we got a little worried about her. Two weeks ago we purchased an easter egger/RIR (4 weeks old) and a silkie/cochin (1 week old). The EE/RIR had to deal with a couple of days of heavy pecking order, but they've worked it out and are doing great. The silkie/cochin is still in the house on a light but we socialize the silkie/cochin with the other two when we free range them in the yard. Feral chicken was really into the silkie/cochin's toes for the first week so we had to watch them closely. They socialize just fine now.

Feral chicken is like a velociraptor with a mission to consume skinks, huge cockroaches, and coqui frogs that the EE/RIR just blinks at. Well actually the coakroaches seem to freak her out...Maybe this velociraptor approach to food is rooster behavior? We don't know, maybe it's just wild chicken behavior? We suspect feral chicken might be a rooster but we can't tell yet other than her behavior. If she turns out to be a hen, I'll update on how well she lays...

- Peace out

 

[nubbin]

Quote:
To follow up on this several weeks later... Turns out our feral chicken was indeed a roo. He started crowing at around 4 months and seemed to have hit his crowing stride at 4.5 months. We had to part with him since we can't keep roosters. We used the Meat Birds sticky thread on how to Skin and Dress a bird which shows a youtube video of the process. It was an excellent tutorial and I highly recommend it for anyone who will be dispatching their birds for meat. He was a pretty small bird so that's something to consider depending on what your motivation is for raising chickens.