Successful 100% forage diet experiment (long post)

[ShrekDawg]

WOW!! Exceptional Article. And that site has many more Articles. Nice to have so much knowledge in one easy to access site.

I always wondered but never knew how many free range chickens per acre was best. Learned a lot.

I learned quite a lot too so figured I should share it!

 

[Newyorkrita]

I learned quite a lot too so figured I should share it!

I am very glad you did.

 

[SJCatWrangler]

Every so often someone posts a question asking if chickens can survive solely on free-range/forage. The overwhelming response is generally a resounding "no", followed by a laundry list of reasons why it shouldn't be attempted (from not enough forage to increased exposure to predation, etc), which is probably true in most situations.

I am always interested in the threads talking about this because it just seems to me that 100% free-ranging is a species-appropriate life for a chicken, and in my mind, is the gold standard that I should strive for. Adding to that, I geek out on nutrition topics (humans AND animals), so the idea of truly unadulterated meat and eggs makes me swoon.

I just can't believe that this practice is nothing more than a relic of days gone by, only existing in stories of how our grandparents did it. I've been toying with the idea of trying it out for years. I don't feed my goats or my steer, so...why am I feeding the chickens?

I decided to go for it.

So, back somewhere around May I gathered up 48 eggs from my flock and dusted off the Janoel. I had never attempted a dry hatch/incubation, so I decided to try it out. 38 of the 48 hatched right on time with a 3 day spread from first pip to last out of the shell.

I fed the chicks fermented organic, soy-free, non-gmo layer mash direct from the mill while they were in the brooder phase. (Yes, layer mash. 17% to be exact.) I did not vaccinate them, add anything to the water, or supplement with 'treats'). Not a single chick had pasty butt, by the way. (That's because of the fermented feed).

I moved the chicks to an outdoor, open-air brooder when the first adult feathers started showing up. Yes, this is earlier than 'general wisdom' says to do so. I kept them on the fermented feed and started pulling up large clumps of grass and weeds and random vegetation from the creek bank, (roots and dirt and rocks included) to put inside the brooder every day. Once over the initial fear of the new 'thing' in the brooder, the chicks would attack the clumps of vegetation with gusto. I also did not clean out the outdoor brooder. I left all the grass and dirt refuse in it.

The brooder is a two-story prefab coop marketed for 4-6 adult birds, (but isn't big enough for one bird to live it's life in if you ask me). I built a hardware cloth floor for the brooder and put it on wagon tires. It sits outside in the grass and is surrounded by electric poultry netting. My intent was to move the brooder and fence every week or so and keep the youngsters confined within the electric poultry netting.

I started letting the chicks out of the brooder house when they were about 1/2 fuzz and 1/2 feathers. They would stay out all day and return to the coop for the night. What I didn't realize at first is that some were going right through the poultry netting and out into the wild unknown all day long. When I figured this out, all bets were off and I just started opening the gate in the mornings and closing it at night. The experiment was officially beginning whether I liked it or not.

I put some fermented feed in the brooder each evening for about a week, mostly for my own peace of mind that it would get the birds to return home.
It did.
However, the birds all had full crops upon returning to the brooder each evening, so I decided it was time to stop offering food completely.

And that is how it has remained to this day. I never moved the brooder from it's original location and I don't even close it. I do close the electric fence. Gotta say that I'm happy to NOT have to pull up and reset a ridiculous amount of electric poultry fencing every week...

Have there been losses? Yes. I lost 3 birds to sour crop early on, which I believe was due to eating overly fibrous grasses.
Do they still return to the brooder? Most do, others just return to the general area. They don't all choose to roost inside the brooder house. Some roost on top of it. Others roost high up in nearby Oak trees. Two hens and a roo seem to prefer roosting on my lawnmower.

All but one hen and 4 roosters have figured out that flying over the fence every morning is preferable to waiting on me to go open the gate for them. Half the flock hauls butt into the forest and the other half head off to the creek first thing every day, even before daylight (I only know this because I can hear the roosters). I rarely see them at all until dusk rolls around and they start heading back to the brooder house.

An armadillo and a possum have decided to make homes inside the poultry fencing. The possum routinely steals the nest box bedding, which is fine because the hens won't use the nest boxes. A few will lay eggs inside the brooder house. Two lay eggs on my front deck. One lays an egg in the doghouse that my elderly cat stays in during the winter. The rest of them lay eggs in the woods. None of the birds seem to mind the armadillo and possum hanging around.

Are the birds skinny? Malnourished? Bony? No, No, and No. They are all of comparable size to my other flock that free ranges during the day and is given 16% layer pellets every evening after returning to the barn.

Do I give them any food at all? Sure. I throw their eggshells outside after breakfast. If any birds are still around the house they will immediately come and eat them. I also throw out the meat and bones leftover from making chicken bone broth. They eat every scrap of it. I occasionally throw out wilty fruit/vegetables or stale bread ends (homemade). I do this mostly because I'm lazy and it's easier to throw this stuff off the back deck than it is to have it stinking up the kitchen trash can. If the chickens don't eat it, possums and raccoons will. Either is fine with me. Point being that I throw stuff to them on occasion, but in insignificant amounts.

The eggs are smaller than those from my older barn flock, but they are the same in regards to having thick shells and membranes. Unless you hit a rock, the eggs bounce when you throw them on the ground! The yolks are the darkest orange-red I've ever seen. I honestly thought something was very wrong when I saw the first one. The older barn birds eggs also have nice orange yolks, but not anywhere near as dark the others. I don't know why there is a color difference between the flocks.

As for predation, I haven't lost any birds from this flock to predators. I do lose birds from the barn flock to predators on a regular basis...about one a month. I see hawks overhead every day and I often see a fox slinking around near the barn. Raccoons are plentiful. I don't know why this flock has managed to survive predation so far. Is it because they've lived 'wild' basically their whole lives and are more world-wise and able to avoid predators? I truly don't know.

They have a decent amount of forest to roam...land that has never been developed or used for anything. It has decades upon decades of forest floor leaf litter, decaying branches, mosses, mushrooms, and who-knows-what-all out there. I'm certain it's a bug smorgasbord. I no longer fill up waterers either. I stopped that awhile back, too. There's a mile of creek here, so I figure they're good with that.

So, there you go. Chickens can not only survive, they can thrive, on a 100% free-range/forage diet.

I know that not everyone lives in a similar type of place and I wouldn't think of trying this in a suburban yard situation, or even a semi-suburban with a couple of acres situation. I'm not advocating for everyone to stop feeding their chickens. Some of you out there may have the right kind of place for this and a mind to try it, and I'm just here saying it can be done. And at the risk of patting myself on the back too hard...I feel like I may have raised a better/hardier/smarter flock of birds than any of the others I've had before.

Or maybe they've just been lucky.


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I'm all about FULL ON FREE RANGE! First flock I had only got feed when it snowed or table scraps! Oh and they like to chase the cats away from the cat food. Best darn eggs ever! Healthy birds, big, fat, beautiful plumage. Had a friend that raised chickens to sell eggs. Bought all the best feed, and medicines, etc. He just couldn't understand why my birds looked SO MUCH better!

Im fortunate to live in an area where bugs abound and they have LOTS of wooded space to forage.
Only draw back was the occasional predator. Marsh hawk got the rooster (and was bold enough to go toe to toe with the feral cat colony to keep his feast). Neighbors dog ultimately got most of them. (neighbors dog is long gone).
Current flock is predominantly Free Range, been weaning them off of "store bought, organic" feed for awhile and they are THRIVING!
I try to coop them in the evening but like Accidental Farm some of my girls prefer to roost in odd places like my mower shed and bicycle shed. If you've got the space with adequate foraging grounds and water I highly recommend Free Range! I'm way to busy, broke, and lazy to fuss over my flock. My girls get a wide variety of grade A, number 1 food from the land! And my dog has decided that he is the protector of them. He runs off the foxes and coyotes, coons, etc. Potential danger of loss from some sneaky predator but so far so good.
Answer in a nutshell GODs way works way better than mans! Also answers the age old question" which came first, chicken or egg? Definely the chicken! ......on the Ark.

 

[Perris]

hello @SJCatWrangler - welcome to BYC

 

[SJCatWrangler]

hello @SJCatWrangler - welcome to BYC

Hello and thank you

 

[ILChickenTV]

I'm not surprised that chickens can live basically wild on enough land because that's how they were found before "jungle fowl" were domesticated. However, that was in SE Asia which has much warmer year-round climate than the US. Jungles aren't known for harsh winters.

Most of us don't have the conditions to make it successful. Raccoons are a chicken predator, so I'm surprised you haven't seen losses there.

Some questions for you:

• Where are you located (approximately)?
• Have they gone through a winter on their own?
• What percentage of their eggs do you think you are getting? I figure, they lay some where you can find them and some elsewhere.

Don't know if anyone else mentioned this, but I was under the impression that the "OG" junglefowl lived in the cold mountains of SE Asia as well, hence the ease of adapting them for many climates.
My first hen found itself in my backyard in the middle of a Chicago polar vortex winter, and we didn't decide keep and coop her till the following spring! And she's a leghorn, which most hatcheries claim is not a cold hardy breed.

 

[TooCheep]

Don't know if anyone else mentioned this, but I was under the impression that the "OG" junglefowl lived in the cold mountains of SE Asia as well, hence the ease of adapting them for many climates.
My first hen found itself in my backyard in the middle of a Chicago polar vortex winter, and we didn't decide keep and coop her till the following spring! And she's a leghorn, which most hatcheries claim is not a cold hardy breed.

It wasn't the cold-hardiness I was commenting on really, but the ability to forage and find liquid water when winter comes. I wonder what your leghorn was able to find in your area during winter.

 

[Red-Stars-in-RI]

I have 11 leghorns in my flock, and I am impressed with their foraging skills. I wouldn't have expected that from a production breed, but there you go.

I have a couple of polish hens too, and those goofy looking little things have a lot of "chicken" in them too...very good foragers.

 

[Rooster Hens Organic]

You've got a great variety of forage. Moringa especially catches my eye. It's an amazing forage/fodder. I've started some trees in the greenhouse to transplant out along the creek this year.
If you try it out with birds that are used to getting feed every day, just cut back a little on the feed gradually and watch how they do. Watch how they behave, how active they are, and look at the size of their crops at the end of the day before you start reducing feed so that you'll know if they are finding enough forage to make up the difference. I don't know if you feed their eggshells back to them, but it can't hurt. I do even though calcium is abundant where I am.
If for some reason it doesn't work out completely, it sounds like you've got enough variety there to be able to at least reduce their dependence on feed by quite a lot.

I'd really love to hear how it works out for you. Please come back with updates!

Yes, I have a lot of Moringa growing as well in the yard and the chickens graze on it all day. I have grown pigeon peas in the past and will again, they also self seed readily and can become basically a perennial. I will continue to document my progress with updates.

 

[ShrekDawg]

I have 11 leghorns in my flock, and I am impressed with their foraging skills. I wouldn't have expected that from a production breed, but there you go.

I have a couple of polish hens too, and those goofy looking little things have a lot of "chicken" in them too...very good foragers.

My Leghorn is an excellent forager too! It amazes me!