Successful 100% forage diet experiment (long post)

[Bigtom Turkey]

Same, I am looking to do the same thing with gamefowl. And I was really hoping for some updates.

 

[My Very First 6 Chickens]

One

I love hearing stories like this.
I agree 100% that we've made them weak with all of our breed tinkering.

One of my GLW’s waits for me to pick her up and carry her across the snowy spots here in CT

 

[ChickForLife]

One

One of my GLW’s waits for me to pick her up and carry her across the snowy spots here in CT

Same, I have a Brahma and an RIR like that. All the others cross the snow but those two wait for me to carry them over.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

One

One of my GLW’s waits for me to pick her up and carry her across the snowy spots here in CT

Smart chicken! She has trained you!

 

[raingarden]

I'm so glad this thread was kicked up to the top again. I'm a new-comer and had not seen it . It took days to get through 28 pages; what with the distractions of cumfrey and other new-to-me stuff.

Anyway, our family has a quasi-feral flock. We call them "ours" only because we give them supplemental food and they choose to stay around (it's bribery).. There have been times when they were completely ignored for months at a time. It doesn't take them long to figure out the corn has returned.

We know they have been here, unchanged, for going on forty years. They were here when my father-in-law bought the place and were probably here for who-knows-how-long before that.. They are wheaton-like hens with RJF-like roosters. They breed true-to-type.. There are feral flocks dispersed all along this side of the island. Some of the other flocks look just like ours. while some have identical roosters but the hens look like RJF or OEGF.

Our intentions are the same as AccidentalFarm. It's just fun to watch them be chickens. We have eaten a few of their eggs as a novility but generally just watch them when we happen to find a nest. We have eaten a few poulets as a novilty but they are always so scrawny and tough that it's hardly worth the effort and, besides, someone will complain.

It's amazing that the AccidentalFarm flock has adjusted so quickly and so well; doubly so because the founding stock are mostly big eggers. In the end though, the project depends on a somebody going broody and raising offspring to perpetuate the clan. I don't know how often that happens, but it would happen sooner with a more primative line or breed. I'm betting in the Cemani genes to come through in the next few weeks.

One observation about a feral flock. They have a genetic heritage which may or may not help them survive and prosper, and they also have a cultural heritage. Knowledge about places and organisms that are good for foraging, roosting, dust bathing, nesting, etc. are specific to the site and are passed down from one generation to the next.

Around here, wild chicks are raised largely on groundhoppers, a slinder little amphipod about one-eighth inch long. The hens spend much of the day scratching where the moisture of the leaf litter is just right to have groundhoppersthat jump up so the chicks can eat them. Sure, sometimes there will be something larger, maybe even a cockroach or worm. But they eat thousands of groundhoppers.

I like to watch them teaching the chicks to go to roost. They start them off jumping up a few inches. Jump up on the branch, jump down, up, down, up, down about twenty times in the last hour before dark. The next day it's a little higher. At the end of school the hen settles down on the ground and calls the chicks up under her for the night. By the time they will no longer fit under the hen she has them going six to ten feet up in a bush or tree to spend the night next to her like a big chicken. But, I ramble.

Let us know when those chicks hatch AccidentalFarm.

 

[629864]

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.

I'm curious how you captured the wild roosters for culling and whether you ever ended up with chicks being successfully hatched and raised by this group.

I'm very much for letting our chickens and guineas forage as much as possible, but we would definitely always need to supplement in winter because of snow and ice that can fully cover the ground for over a week at a time. Withput the snow/ice, the chickens wander further and further afield as the days get warmer and at this point, they explore about 5-6 acres. On bad weather days, they stick to the 1-ish acre of fenced area around the house. I also have LGDs ... who are a blessing and a curse for the chickens because they keep all predators away, but heaven help the chicken who wanders over the fence into the area patrolled by the dogs.

 

[629864]

My birds free range during the day - not the entire day because I'm not an early riser but good enough. I close the coop at night for those who roost in there because if a predator gets in, the walls and roof will prevent the birds from escaping as they would in a true wild setting.

My older birds - and anyone prone to following the older ones - free range all the time because they sleep in trees. I have a lot of wooded property but that's not where the birds are haha. They're right next to the house and driveway, and wander bushes and a few rows of trees that block us from the neighbor, but not proper woods.

I've been locking my girls up more lately because I'd actually like to get eggs so I'm teaching them to lay in the coop for me. My "free range all the time" wont, I'm sure, but sometimes they lay where I can find, and accidental clutches of chicks are a lot of fun when I cant. My ladies seem to know safe places to nest - I've seen them under cars that dont work/never move and in the horse pasture a lot. I assume the horses deter some predators, but dont bother the chickens any. Some of my broodies will come back to the feed area to eat and drink, but some I just dont see for 21 days, so either I just missed them or they were fending for themselves just fine.

If I completely stopped feeding my birds - which I cant really do because I need the peacocks to range into the neighbors yards as little as possible - theyd still be getting commerical horse feed as they literally hang out around the feet of the horses while they eat and grab up what is dropped.

They definitely forage a ton, but we go through a lot of feed as well. I meant to start keeping track of that and may soon. Theyll drink out of the waterers I provide - or at least someone is because I have to refill them - but also out of puddles and theyve found the exit end of the gutter and drink from that as well.

We've been wanting to get peacocks as well and want them to free range with the rest of the flock. How did you train yours to come home? We've read it can be difficult to prevent peafowl from just leaving and not coming back. That would be a very expensive loss.

 

[raingarden]

We have had people call and tell us to come retrieve our peafowl several times. Their screaming makes them wear out their welcome fast. Right now, about the beginning of the breeding season, is when they are most likely to wander off. Get them hooked on dog kibble and they'll come home when they get hungry.

 

[HomesteadNowhere]

Very interesting, I hope they come back and update

 

[raingarden]

Talking about a flock on 100% forage makes me thingk about cattlemen.

Cattlemen have this concept of the maximum systainable number of cows a piece of land can feed without the cows completely disrupting the ecology and turning the land into a barren desert or mud pit. It's expressed as the number of cows per acre. The maximum sustainable number is a delicate balance controlled by characteristics of the land and complicated by the vulgarities of weather. If the balance is upset then it is necessary to remove cattle or add supplemental feed. Supplemental feed further upsets the nutrient cycling, further disrupts the ecology and sets the cattleman on a slippery slope to feedlot status.

The rule-of-thumb seems to be that chickens need to be at a density of 50 birds per acre or less to maintain a forage base. If you run what amounts to a poultry feed lot the density can be hundreds or even a thousand birds per acre, but the land must be rested and rejuvenated between batches. I don't know where the 50/acre number came from but suspect it is too high.

Fifty birds per acre means each individual has a space slightly less than 30 feet by 30 feet. I contend that one chicken can completely dominate and change the forage base in a plot that size.

It appears that our quasi-feral flock has stabilized, of it's own accord, at a density of less than ten birds per acre. There are fifteen to twenty chickens spread over two acreas of our land plus some use of an acre of the neighbors land. And, that is with a little bit of supplemental feed daily.

Reproduction/recruitment does not seem to be the limiting factor. The flock hatches a hundred or more chicks every year. If the chicks are captured, cooped up and fed their survival will be more than 80%. Left in the wild, about 20-30% will still be around when they start to mature. But, the vast majority of these migrate, are driven away or die so that the total number in the flock remains about the same. This last part is mysterious because we never see dead birds or birds walking off into the sunset. They just disappear. There are other feral flocks on all sides so it is not like there is uninhabited territory to colonize.

This property has a variety of habitats but is, overall, reasonably productive. Even at a density of less than ten birds per acre you can see how they are modifying the world around them. Truth be known, nobody knows how the land would look like without chickens because they have been here longer than anyone can remember.