What is truly best for our chickens is to have a mixed age, mixed sex flock large enough to self divide into several tribes. All with free assess to the farmyard of a working diversified farm next to a forest with a well trained pair or trio of livestock guard dogs to provide predator protection.
Bless your heart, horrible story. So sorry, definitely don’t blame you for building fort knox. We free ranged when we were home but that wasn’t enough to stop predators. I lost one to a hawk, after that if I let mine out, I watch them like a hawk, despite my rooster doing the same (he is still young but getting there). We just built a massive permanent run for our chooks because I felt bad keeping them confined. They seem much happier in the new run and my husband really went over the top to make sure its secure. All chooks sleep in the coop at night and their pop door locks too. Hope you have better luck. Many of us see our chooks as pets, its hard to lose them. For purposes of this post I do both. I love letting them out but when I can’t watch them they are in their GIANT run lol.I have a 5 acre property in the country.
Flock 1: Ducks - I had an electric poultry net fence. The battery died while I was at work. Fox had a gourmet meal.
Flock 2: Chickens (smarter than ducks, supposedly) After the 2nd year with them and no further predator attacks, I free ranged this flock. There is nothing more beautiful and soothing, in my opinion, than content hens clucking and scratching along the shrubbery. Then I cam home from work one day to a massacre. 14 dead hens, feather and bodies scattered from one end of my property to the other. 3 missing hens I never did find. 4 survivors who took shelter in my garage.
Flock 3: That was the end of unsupervised free range. I built a 2nd and larger run onto my chicken coop - about 50x100, I surrounded it with 6 foot chain link fence my brother had salvaged from a job. I set my alarm on my phone to go off 30 minutes before sunset so I could make sure they were shut in. I got some new chicks. Things seemed to be fine for about a year or so. Then I noticed missing eggs. Then I came out one evening to find a racoon in the coop. Then I came home to a puff of feathers (raptor of some sort). Then another puff of feathers. Then a half eaten carcass (coon) . So I bought bird netting. It worked for a bit, but those coons are like water. They will find a way. By the end of that next year, I was down to 3 hens again.
Flock 4: I tore down the 50x100 foot run and confined them back to the original run (12x12). I got a few more chicks. I took that chain link fence, and I put it ON TOP of my run. I put down a chain link dig skirt. I sealed up any point of entrance I could find. I went through 10 bags of zip ties, sealing up any gaps where the chain link overlapped. I fine tooth combed that run. It worked for about 3 years. I could finally relax and not go into hyper attack mode any time I heard a chicken squawk. (yes, chicken keeping with predators is a constant state of fight or flight for the chicken keeper) Then the eggs started disappearing again. I thought I had an egg eating hen, so I put out more oyster shell. The hens were acting skittish. I put out a game camera...nothing. Then I came out one evening to find a coon in the coop again. NO CLUE how it got in to this day. I moved the game camera. no luck. Then I came home to a coon in my coop eating a broody hen while she was on her nest. That was it. I rehomed my last hens, and took a break for about 5 years.
Flock 5: Present Day - I said if I did this again, I was starting from scratch and building fort knox. I have built it. My hens will not wander. I don't want them to even view the door as something they want go through. They have 10 X 20 feet in the run, and I've added several outside perches to increase usable space for them. Plus they have the coop. Also, we have waterfowl in the area, and I'd rather not take chances with HPAI.
I don't know where this idea came from. Many years ago when we stumbled out of our caves we were the prey of many other creatures and huddled in groups to protect ourselves in case something fancied an easy snack. We (humans) are woefully badly equiped in our natural state to defend ourselves. How we elevated ourselves to the predator classes is beyond me given a local Tom cat could win a fight with a naked unarmed human.
Ditto Dat!I couldn't help noticing that you've implied certain factors in the two types of keeping arrangement are mutually exclusive.
A sloppy propostion leads to a sloppy debate.
