Quote:
Feral populations of chickens persist in parts of Florida. Predators need to be suppressed. We used to keep games in near feral conditions on walks up until the late 1980's. Management was restricted to swapping out brood-cocks and harvesting young in fall. With some of those walks not so tightly managed, hens replaced themselves for decades although we did usually do replacements ourselves. One walk represented an inbred line, was centered on a fence row near a grain mill, persisted for 20 years without addition of fresh blood. Concern about gameness was not warranted in the end which is surprising since flock went without more frequent verification. For to work predators like foxes and raccoons had to be kept low which we did by having free-range dogs. Cover protected most from raptors. Situation would have fallen apart without dogs and heavy hunting. True red jungle fowl come from a very large area of southern Asia and India making so behaviors almost certainly vary between populations in a way that makes them adapted to their respective locations. Some of those locations might be similar enough to yours where if you got appropriately sourced, wild reared jungle fowl, a feral population might be founded by such. Wildlife biologist would frown a bit it they new what you were up to.
I have being trying to setup some more feral flocks in present location but predator abundance is simply too high.
:/
Feral populations of chickens persist in parts of Florida. Predators need to be suppressed. We used to keep games in near feral conditions on walks up until the late 1980's. Management was restricted to swapping out brood-cocks and harvesting young in fall. With some of those walks not so tightly managed, hens replaced themselves for decades although we did usually do replacements ourselves. One walk represented an inbred line, was centered on a fence row near a grain mill, persisted for 20 years without addition of fresh blood. Concern about gameness was not warranted in the end which is surprising since flock went without more frequent verification. For to work predators like foxes and raccoons had to be kept low which we did by having free-range dogs. Cover protected most from raptors. Situation would have fallen apart without dogs and heavy hunting. True red jungle fowl come from a very large area of southern Asia and India making so behaviors almost certainly vary between populations in a way that makes them adapted to their respective locations. Some of those locations might be similar enough to yours where if you got appropriately sourced, wild reared jungle fowl, a feral population might be founded by such. Wildlife biologist would frown a bit it they new what you were up to.
I have being trying to setup some more feral flocks in present location but predator abundance is simply too high.
:/
Last edited:
