Franklinridgefarms
Songster
Maybe so, but I will continue to do things the way we do. It’s nice to be able to have some good productive egg layers, and not have to worry about a whole laundry list of varmits picking them off.Let me make a point and maybe stir the pot a bit:
I would assert any argument that starts as “I can’t free range because I have too many predators” is an invalid argument unless you qualify it with “… because I have too many predators AND I raise breeds that are not predator resistant. I acknowledge that there are many breeds of chickens in the world that are highly predator resistant and would thrive in my predator-rich environment, but I choose not to raise those.”
If you don’t believe there are chickens out there that can out-thrive and reproduce faster than coyotes, hawks, and whatever predator gauntlet they’re thrown down can harvest them, then that just tells me there’s a bunch of chickens out there you need to learn about.
There’s no such thing as your location having more predators than the right chickens can handle.
I speak from the experiences of being a livestock farmer of multiple species for 30 years, and growing up on a farm before that. With cattle and especially young calves and cows giving birth, coyotes and black buzzards are a constant threat. Yes there are breeds that are more protective than others, when it comes to coyotes. There are points of vulnerability that they will use to attack. In the case of buzzards most of the time the sheer numbers of them encircling a cow and newborn calf end with them killing the calf and the cow exhausted from trying to fend them off.
I tried many different ways of predator (coyote) control when I had sheep and goats from electric fence, to llamas, donkeys, and Great Pyrenees. All worked to an extent but all had faults and eventually I had to give up trying and no longer have sheep and goats.
As a child I remember we lost chickens, ducks, geese, peafowl to predators. Due to less hunting and trapping, as well as more predatory species there are many more threats to animals now than back then.
My way of thinking is I’m not going to purchase and care for animals/birds only to have them killed in short order by any number of predators.
There may very well be breeds of chickens that are better at evading predators, and if anyone can make the free range thing work then that is great.