Successful 100% forage diet experiment (long post)

[ScratchNbawk]

@SandLapper you may find this interesting.

Interesting post, would love to know how it goes.

 

[ackie]

relevant sections of first post

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 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.

 

[TheOddOneOut]

I think she plans to try with a new hatch, not her existing flock.

Ah, that makes more sense. Thanks.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

I think it's a cool experiment but according to the OP it was started based on the many reasons free ranging for food is not suggested for the majority of the population and those reasons were given in the opening post as an example of why they started the experiment. It's easy to see why lots of people, myself included, read the first post and viewed this as an attempt to refute that advice instead of exclusively "this works for me only just for fun".

@ChocolateMouse you misunderstood my original post. My reasons for not trying sooner are those that are commonly given to deter people from doing it (i.e. ranging from sub-par forage either in variety, quantity, or quality to increased risk of predation.) Basically, since everyone says not to do it, I didn't. But I'm not attempting to disprove that those factors are important, and very likely lacking, in most places.

I said that my reasons for going ahead with this are 1) that I believe total free-ranging to be a species appropriate life, and therefore, the gold standard that I should strive for, and 2) because being a nutrition nerd, the idea of totally unadulterated meat and eggs makes me swoon.

It's not "just for fun" and I wouldn't put any animal at risk to humor a whim or for the purpose of refuting internet wisdom.

The intended results are important to me. I believe that if I am able to provide a higher quality of life, then I should absolutely do it. I also believe that livestock provide a quality of food product in direct relation to the quality of life. In my mind, that means living as close as possible to the way nature intended and with the least human intervention as possible.

I've agreed with several posts in the thread that this is likely not a sustainable option for most people.

I'm talking about this process because there are people out there that CAN do this but are maybe hesitant (like I was) because the general "wisdom" out there pretty much agrees that it's a bad thing.

But it's not a bad thing. And for those that are interested, perhaps my little experiment can give them enough information to help them decide whether their location and climate and general situation is suitable to try it themselves.

So no, I'm not refuting the general negative advice out there. I'm simply saying that that advice does not have to apply to everyone.

And if anyone is interested in how things progress, I'm happy to keep talking about it.

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

Lets take the gamefowl/junglefowl genetics out of the equation for a second.

If we looked at a farm in Appalachia in 1890, how would the be keeping their chickens? Did they free range their non-game chickens with minimal human intervention?

Of course they did. The traditional American duel purpose farm chickens were once tough birds that could fend for themselves. Farmer John wasn't running to the feed store once a week. There was no commercial chicken feed until the early 1900s. At most, Farmer John might have put up some corn for them during the winter time. Otherwise the chickens were scratching what they could find from the other livestock and what they could find in the immediate fields and woods, and those chickens would have been the products of many, many, generations of selection that favored chickens that could thrive in those circumstances.

So where does that leave us today? Can our hatchery examples of traditional free-range duel purpose homestead birds of live like they could 100 years ago?

In addition to my games/wilds, I have 9 layers. 4 are mixed layers, 5 are silver laced Wyandottes, and one is a white Easter Egger. They all seem to forage fine. Only ever lost one, one of the Wyandottes, to either predator or disease (she disappeared without any evidence left). They get the same small portion of feed the games get and they have to forage the rest of the day. I have a notion that they have more survival instinct hidden within them than we give them credit. I also have a notion they've learned a lot from watching the games/wilds.

Of course you can't do this sort of experiment in a back yard. Nor could you keep a cow in your back yard without supplemental feed. That doesn't negate the notion that livestock can be self-sufficient.

Maybe we owe it to chickens to toughen them back up and undo what the last 50 years has done to them in the US poultry scene that has made them such poor survivors. At what point has the conventional wisdom of our internet backyard chicken culture become a self-fullfilling prophesy? We pamper chickens because they can no longer take care of themselves. Chickens can no longer take care of themselves because we pamper them.

 

[AccidentalFarm]

I have a notion that they have more survival instinct hidden within them than we give them credit.

This idea fascinates me.
It may be wishful thinking, but I feel like I see some (albeit slight) general behavioral differences between my foragers and my barn flock.

For example, today I went hiking in the woods to see if I could find any eggs. Both the forager flock and the barn flock were out and about. I could see the barn flock moving around in the woods above the barn (barn within sight). They ran back towards the barn when they noticed me getting closer to them.
The foragers though...I never saw or heard them until they came out of the brush to meet me. They knew I was there, but I did not know they were there until they wanted to be seen. They were also not within sight of their brooder house home.

It's a small thing, and I know that a fox nose could tell they were there. It may not mean anything, but it is something I intend to pay more attention to as time goes on to see if it happens this way consistently.

Also, I did not find any eggs. LOL

 

[Florida Bullfrog]

This idea fascinates me.
It may be wishful thinking, but I feel like I see some (albeit slight) general behavioral differences between my foragers and my barn flock.

For example, today I went hiking in the woods to see if I could find any eggs. Both the forager flock and the barn flock were out and about. I could see the barn flock moving around in the woods above the barn (barn within sight). They ran back towards the barn when they noticed me getting closer to them.
The foragers though...I never saw or heard them until they came out of the brush to meet me. They knew I was there, but I did not know they were there until they wanted to be seen. They were also not within sight of their brooder house home.

It's a small thing, and I know that a fox nose could tell they were there. It may not mean anything, but it is something I intend to pay more attention to as time goes on to see if it happens this way consistently.

Also, I did not find any eggs. LOL

All of my chickens, both games/wilds and domestic layers alike, go dead silent when a hawk is scoping them out. They'll of course give the shrill call that's unique to identifying birds of prey and cackle a little bit, but once they're in cover they go quiet. I've seen them sit quiet and watch from cover for over an hour.

 

[ackie]

Also, I did not find any eggs. LOL

I'm telling you, they're great egg hiders. I've always thought having a kid go on an egg hunt would be the only realistic way to find them. Childhood wonder and what not.

 

[Shadrach]

This idea fascinates me.
It may be wishful thinking, but I feel like I see some (albeit slight) general behavioral differences between my foragers and my barn flock.

For example, today I went hiking in the woods to see if I could find any eggs. Both the forager flock and the barn flock were out and about. I could see the barn flock moving around in the woods above the barn (barn within sight). They ran back towards the barn when they noticed me getting closer to them.
The foragers though...I never saw or heard them until they came out of the brush to meet me. They knew I was there, but I did not know they were there until they wanted to be seen. They were also not within sight of their brooder house home.

It's a small thing, and I know that a fox nose could tell they were there. It may not mean anything, but it is something I intend to pay more attention to as time goes on to see if it happens this way consistently.

Also, I did not find any eggs. LOL

You should with a bit of patience be able to locate the hens nests from the escort call they give. Often you'll miss the going to the nest call but even so, if you see a hen and a rooster seperate from the group it's pretty likely she's going to lay an egg. If you're quick, when you hear the hen calling, you can either follow the rosster that answers her call, or get a rough idea of the area her nest is in from where she's calling from. Many hens will move away from the nest before they make the call to make it more difficult for predators to locate the nest. But, here at least they don't move much more that a few metres away before calling.
This explains a bit about it. I find most of the hens outside nests this way.
https://www.backyardchickens.com/ar...-not-about-the-egg-it’s-an-escort-call.74386/

You may laso find that the broodiness bred out of hens opinion doesn't get born out in reality. What I and others have found that given the right conditions even notorisusly non broody hens will sit and hatch. With some it takes some time to unsuppress the instinct.

 

[NatJ]

hidey spots in the woods that I know of, I can get 6-12 eggs a day but this only happens for a few days and then they will abandon that location.

Have you tried putting fake eggs in a nest when you take the real ones?
That might keep them using the same spot, instead of starting a different one.
It worked with the hens I had as a child, and saved me a lot of time hunting for nests. (Of course yours might behave differently than the ones I had.)