Successful 100% forage diet experiment (long post)

[Mtnboomer]

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.


View attachment 2461151

Wait until winter. I free range as well. We have nearly 50 acs of woods, fields, and brush. In the spring (late april) thru fall (early October) i feed 15 birds less than 40lbs total a month. In winter, that amount goes up by almost 3X.

The seeds and insects do make beautiful yolks and are excellent food when they are available but chicken body weights will diminish quickly as that food source becomes more scarce.

Do you plan to continue the no feed technique during colder weather? It will be interesting to see if you see smaller body weights and if so when do they start to drop. Did you weigh the birds from both flocks for comparison or going by visual observation? Feathers can be deceiving and a puffy looking chicken can be surprisingly light when picked up.
I'm not criticizing your experiment at all and think its awesome you tried it. I hope to hear more as it continues and see if it compares to what ive seen.

 

[Splendid Medley]

Good read. I am jealous of your 50 acres. I'd love to do this. I've always wondered if "meat bird" chicks that were bred to grow super fast would live a relatively normal life if given this type of setting.

I'm sure this has been said in the 18 pages I've yet to read, but I want to share my thought on predators (circa page 5). Probably some luck, some avoidance and learning on the chickens part, but also the predators are conditioned to attack coop structures because they contain yummy chickens. Free rangers are harder to catch and compared with other options like squirrels, they are not such a quick meal. Especially if a rooster is defending the hens. I would think a rooster would be essential to this experiment.

My other thought on the weather comments in the north, access to water is the main issue. They would need human help to continue to thrive. Getting both supplemental feed and water. I used to grow fodder so my chicken could have grass in winter, but you would need a big operation, and a variety of greens, plus protein sources which are more important, to have no feed.

 

[chrisod]

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.

So, how do you collect their eggs?

 

[CSolis]

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.


View attachment 2461151

Awesome post chock full of great information. I just want to note, I have never ever bought grit for my kids. I have dirt runs, and for the flock that doesn't get to free range they get plenty of bagged grass whenever I mow (almost daily). Chicks in the brooder get dirt (sandy loam soil here) in a cake pan at 2 weeks. They eat it, dust bath in it and sleep in it. All my other flocks get out to free range once every 3 days as I want to keep the boys and their honey's separated for breeding purposes. Occasionally they escape the hot wire fence, but it's mostly to keep out predators.
I love what you are doing. Ya just wonder what folks did 100 years ago.

 

[NatJ]

Ya just wonder what folks did 100 years ago.

100 years ago, people got a lot less meat & eggs from their chickens. Also, the only chickens they had were the ones that survived under the system they used (different chickens for different climates and conditions.) Modern chickens are usually selected to do well under different conditions (safe housing, unlimited access to a properly balanced chicken food). So the chickens themselves have changed.

Also, folks 100 years ago either learned how to feed the chickens from the resources they had (because their parent or neighbor showed them), or the chickens were malnourished & sickly. If you grow up seeing what Mom feeds the chickens, then it's easy to do it right. When you try to learn it all at once, as an adult, from people on the internet, you tend to have a lot more problems.

I am finding this thread quite interesting-- OP's situation is different than many other people, and I enjoy seeing what works for them.

 

[Chikenux]

hmmm what about winter?

 

[NatJ]

hmmm what about winter?

OP is in Texas, so winter isn't as cold as some places.
A few pages back, there was a January update:

So, It's been crazy busy around here for the last week or so. We got about 3 inches of snow, which is really rare here, and it stayed on the ground for a couple of days. The chickens did not go out foraging in it. I had to supplement feed until the snow started melting.

Egg production is still good. I'm getting at least a dozen a day. Shells are thick, membrane is thick, and yolks continue to be very dark orange. There is a noticeable lightening of yolk color for a day or two after supplementing with feed. They seem to have chosen 3 primary egg laying spots and are returning to them daily, even when I remove all of the eggs. I am not finding eggs in the wooded areas lately.

We culled 7 of the 9 roosters yesterday. They were not meaty birds, that's for sure.
Visually, the carcasses were on par or slightly under the weight of average dual purpose breeds. One went into the pressure cooker right away and turned out some really great bone broth. I honestly feel like they wouldn't be worth the effort to process if you are interested in meat only. They may have been a little meatier if it hadn't been winter time.

So, update in a nutshell:
-feed is supplemented with 2 or more days of rain/snow,
-egg production isn't affected, yolk color IS affected with 2 or more days of rain/snow,
-chickens don't like to walk in snow,
-chickens don't like to forage in snow or heavy rain,
-8 month(ish) old forage roosters are almost equal to dual-purpose breed weights.

 

[yakitori]

@AccidentalFarm any updates?

 

[Jtodd99]

Good read. I am jealous of your 50 acres. I'd love to do this. I've always wondered if "meat bird" chicks that were bred to grow super fast would live a relatively normal life if given this type of setting.

I'm sure this has been said in the 18 pages I've yet to read, but I want to share my thought on predators (circa page 5). Probably some luck, some avoidance and learning on the chickens part, but also the predators are conditioned to attack coop structures because they contain yummy chickens. Free rangers are harder to catch and compared with other options like squirrels, they are not such a quick meal. Especially if a rooster is defending the hens. I would think a rooster would be essential to this experiment.

My other thought on the weather comments in the north, access to water is the main issue. They would need human help to continue to thrive. Getting both supplemental feed and water. I used to grow fodder so my chicken could have grass in winter, but you would need a big operation, and a variety of greens, plus protein sources which are more important, to have no feed.

As someone who free ranged 24/7 you’re right. Having a rooster is the most important key in free ranging for me. And I mean a rooster who’s worthy. My boys are the best at watching over the hens. They find nesting spots, constantly scan the area for predators, and help tremendously. I always like to have a mature rooster, and ideally a younger protege in case he unexpectedly dies(which just happened). For that reason I’m always hatching eggs to keep the generations going.

 

[littlecoopnextdoor]

I wish there was an update on this. I want to know if they had a clutch, if the birds did okay over the whole year. Anyone know where @AccidentalFarm went?