Successful 100% forage diet experiment (long post)

[AccidentalFarm]

So @AccidentalFarm this experiment has been going on for 6 months?
..and gave them no commercial chicken feed after about 6 weeks?

Curious about your climate.
Where in this world are you located?
Climate, and time of year, is almost always a factor.
Please add your general geographical location to your profile.
It's easy to do, and then it's always there!
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I live in central Texas, so all of this has been going on during very hot weather. It has started to cool down a bit off and on since last month. We've seen freezing weather at night several times so far. The birds still just roost wherever. They show no inclination to seek out shelter.

 

[Bigtom Turkey]

Super interesting read, I tried kinda the same thing, feeding mine on just kitchen scraps, and just like yours they not only survived but thrived! There only draw back was less eggs but the ones I got, were like you say, very hard.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

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.

-Central Texas
-This is the first winter and they are doing fine so far. There is shelter available to them should they want to use it.
-I'm getting a small percentage of the eggs. I *could* get more if I wanted to hike the hills every day, but I don't. I know the general area that some of the hens frequent and I'm pretty sure that I could find eggs if I looked around some.

 

[Perris]

Thanks for sharing your experiment @AccidentalFarm ; a most interesting read.

That your self-reliant flock taught themselves how to survive with no guidance from older flock members shows how important instinct is in this. What breeds or mixes were you starting with?

 

[TooCheep]

It will be interesting to see how this develops over time. Let us know how they do over the winter. Also, assuming they reproduce in the semi-wild, it will be interesting to see how the next generation develops and how the cockerels behave given that generally only the strongest jungle fowl maintain harems of hens.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

Thanks for sharing your experiment @AccidentalFarm ; a most interesting read.

That your self-reliant flock taught themselves how to survive with no guidance from older flock members shows how important instinct is in this. What breeds or mixes were you starting with?

My starting flock that donated the hatching eggs is a mix of heritage, rare, and mutts. I had a BCM and an Olive Egger Roo over all of these-->American Bresse, Ayam Cemani, All variations of Marans, Olive Eggers, Ameraucana, Cream Legbar, Isbar, Blue Orp, Ancona, Blue Andalusian, Blue Australorp, and mixes of all the above.

I agree with you regarding instinct. It's been fascinating to watch the progression. The chicks were inclined to wander from the moment they realized that they could.
Interestingly, my older 'barn' flock stay relatively near to the barn. They will go into the woods, but they keep the barn within sight. It is often said that chickens don't roam very far from home, and that has been the case with my other birds over the last 15 years, but it's not at all accurate with this new flock.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

It will be interesting to see how this develops over time. Let us know how they do over the winter. Also, assuming they reproduce in the semi-wild, it will be interesting to see how the next generation develops and how the cockerels behave given that generally only the strongest jungle fowl maintain harems of hens.

I'm not confident a hen would survive sitting on eggs if she chooses to do so out in the woods. We'll see!
I've noticed already with the roos that 2 of them wander either alone, or on the outskirts of a larger flock. They are the loudest and most frequent crowers. Annoyingly so.
The other roos stay with groups of hens and are not as vocal.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

My grandmother lived on a farm in rural north central Florida with her immediate and extended family. The farm was 100 acres of mostly woods. This region of Florida is sub-tropical. It gets frosts a dozen or more times in a winter but rarely has hard freezes. The woods were a mix of pine flat woods and hardwood hammock and wooded ponds. The nearest neighbor was probably over a mile away by horseback. For the most part this was frontier wilderness. High predator population.

The family chickens were an unknown kind of junglefowl-like gamefowl. The gamefowl numbered in the several hundred across the 100 acres. They were not given supplemental feed or human care. They lived very much like wild turkeys. My grandmother would shoot 30 or so of the gamefowl a month to feed the family and that didn't put a dent in their population as they reproduced on their own so prolifically. Because the family didn't have to feed them, they functioned as free meat.

Keeping chickens totally free range, without supplemental food and little human intervention, is absolutely realistic and was the norm for much of the country in the 1800s and early to mid 1900s. We've made chickens weak through failing to select them for survival traits and instead only focusing on selection for high yield meat and egg production and by removing predator pressures via the hatchery system.

The right chickens in the right habitat can absolutely live with little human intervention beyond the humans' mere presence itself. Human presence alone is a predator deterrent so long as the humans occasionally hunt the predators and keep free range dogs around.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

I was thinking sometime this spring, but I haven't planned it out yet. I hatched out 30-40 chicks in August (I don't know how many are left now, as they are impossible to count), so probably once the hens start laying and we get rid of some of the roosters.

I understand 'impossible to count' lol
I'm hoping to see chicks hopping along behind a momma hen this spring. I can't imagine how they'd survive out there though.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

My grandmother lived on a farm in rural north central Florida with her immediate and extended family. The farm was 100 acres of mostly woods. This region of Florida is sub-tropical. It gets frosts a dozen or more times in a winter but rarely has hard freezes. The woods were a mix of pine flat woods and hardwood hammock and wooded ponds. The nearest neighbor was probably over a mile away by horseback. For the most part this was frontier wilderness. High predator population.

The family chickens were an unknown kind of junglefowl-like gamefowl. The gamefowl numbered in the several hundred across the 100 acres. They were not given supplemental feed or human care. They lived very much like wild turkeys. My grandmother would shoot 30 or so of the gamefowl a month to feed the family and that didn't put a dent in their population as they reproduced on their own so prolifically. Because the family didn't have to feed them, they functioned as free meat.

Keeping chickens totally free range, without supplemental food and little human intervention, is absolutely realistic and was the norm for much of the country in the 1800s and early to mid 1900s. We've made chickens weak through failing to select them for survival traits and instead only focusing on selection for high yield meat and egg production and by removing predator pressures via the hatchery system.

The right chickens in the right habitat can absolutely live with little human intervention beyond the humans' mere presence itself. Human presence alone is a predator deterrent so long as the humans occasionally hunt the predators and keep free range dogs around.

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