What are the best breed of chickens for free range

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Hope it's okay to resurrect this thread. Brown leghorns... fairly good for free ranging? We will have roosters initially, might keep one permanently, for approximately 8 hens. No dog. We have a few hawks, eagles, and I almost forgot, owls, that actively prey on the wild cottontails. Alligators not a problem as coop will be about 50 yards from water. Coyotes, foxes, bobcats, etc are extremely rare here and there are no feral dogs. A few free ranging semi-feral cats, I saw one just a couple weeks ago, hunting birdies and bunnies. Bad idea? The strongly considered alternative is to just have a large pen, plastic fencing and webbing from old shrimp nets for cover.
 
sourland said:
Welcome to BYC. Game fowl can be successful free rangers.
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I’m gonna definitely have to agree with this! One of my neighbors has a bunch of game fowl that free range. And those birds sleep in the trees all year and I have seen them fly or run away from foxes and coyotes and get away. I’ve seen them sleeping in the tree atleast 20 foot high. They can fly really far too. Now I’m sure he’s probably had a few predator losses but those chickens are true survivors. My enclosed chickens would never survive those predator attacks. Good luck and welcome!
 
I have a mixed flock and have made observations that my Ancona would probably be the only one to survive free ranging. She's hyper aware of predators and is very fast. The Welsummers would do okay too.

My Barred Rocks would not. While they are good "hunters" they are bigger and just look very edible. They often will stand in the middle of an open field and ignore calls of warning. My Easter Eggers are even worse. They literally scream if they get scared. If they hear a hawk, they draw attention to themselves by screaming and running around crazy. Silly birds.
 

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