What's the best breed to let run semi-feral?

[MildlyOffensiveChicken]

Icelandics

 

[jeg1954]

I'm in Tennessee. Summers are brutal, winters get pretty chilly. I'm looking for a flock to pretty much sustain itself on my land, no fences, but a coop to go into at night and food water supplemented for free ranging. Basically just a step above feral. Looking for meat and eggs and baby chick raising. Any suggestions for breeds to look at?

I think the all time best for what you need is the (DARK CORNISH ) i have them and love them and if you try them you will too.

 

[Kglassmo]

I think the all time best for what you need is the (DARK CORNISH ) i have them and love them and if you try them you will too.

Yes! Dark Cornish are what we called ‘Indian Game chickens’ in the old days! Circa 1980s. Lol. They’re great!

 

[Tjluckey]

I dont think you are going to get something that fits all your requirements..... you will probably be able to get 2 out of 3 or 2 from 4 of your wishes..... choose the top 2 attributes and then decide on a breed.....

You will probably find that mutts will be your best option...... get 4 or 5 different breeds and let them loose ..... you will soon find out which are better suited to your environment

I'm in Tennessee. Summers are brutal, winters get pretty chilly. I'm looking for a flock to pretty much sustain itself on my land, no fences, but a coop to go into at night and food water supplemented for free ranging. Basically just a step above feral. Looking for meat and eggs and baby chick raising. Any suggestions for breeds to look at?

If you could get some mixed bred chickens game/ Rhode Island red for instance are pretty tame and will lay in boxes you provide most of the time. I have game and barnyard mix running around and they do pretty good. You will have to feed them though but otherwise they are preditor savvy. Mine sleep high in trees and made it through the 10 degree freeze last winter. I have a coup for them that they were raised in but they prefer the trees.

 

[NatJ]

You could try some of the "Indian Red Jungle Fowl" from Ideal Poultry.
No, they are not the wild type of jungle fowl, just domestic chickens that are small and look like jungle fowl.

But they can fly fairly well (for a chicken), and the hens seem to be very broody.

They are only a little bigger than bantams, but the hatchery will sell them SEXED which is almost never true of bantams. So you could get a few females and see how they do.

Be aware, Ideal lists them as laying more eggs than almost any other breed on their site, but that must be a typo or something. There is no way you can get that many eggs per year from a bird that spends so much time broody. A friend of mine has one that went broody several times last summer. She also refuses to sleep in the coop, but has so far avoided the predators that usually take chickens sleeping outside their coop.




I see people recommending Icelandic chickens, and it would certainly make sense to try some, but I have read that they are not very predator-savvy. Sorry, I can't find that particular blog again, but the author found that Icelandics on their particular farm got eaten by predators much faster than some of the other breeds they tried-- I think the Icelandics just spread out and foraged, rather than watching for predators. They guessed it was because Iceland has very few predators, so there would have been selection for foraging ability but not much for predator avoidance.

 

[ChickenLeg]

I live in tennessee and when I lived in Knoxville their was a wild flock of gametype birds that lived in south Knoxville. BBR and Silvers, I moved away in 2018 but it had been there for over a decade. Someome moved out and left their birds and they survived on their on.

I live in Jackson TN now and a friend has silver and BBR gamebirds running loose he never has penned them up, they live in bushes and trees out in Cedar Grove. Very country area with lots of predators, and hes had gamebirds since around 2010. He has to catch the extra males omce they get around 4 or 5 months old because they fight til the death on many occassions. If you can find a line of gamebirds from cackle they probably arent as fighty as others but probably are good to live out in the wild. Ive had the idea of having a light brown leghorn x bbr gamebird line that was ferel on the farm but never felt like spending the extra time and money on wild birds. Cheers

 

[Iluveggers]

Iowa blues are know for fighting off hawks and being protectors of the chicken....if you can find a pure breed breeder

I think Ideal carries them...not sure what their quality would be.

 

[Tkissane]

I'm in Tennessee. Summers are brutal, winters get pretty chilly. I'm looking for a flock to pretty much sustain itself on my land, no fences, but a coop to go into at night and food water supplemented for free ranging. Basically just a step above feral. Looking for meat and eggs and baby chick raising. Any suggestions for breeds to look at?

We let our chickens free range without fencing and the breeds that have survived at least 3 years, whether by luck or ability and also continue laying in the coop are australorp, Easter egger, and white leghorn. We had a small flock previously that was free range, no fences. When we moved the new owner kept the flock and gave updates. Australorp and Rhode Island red were still there years after we moved and still laying. The Australorp also have been broody, so I imagine they could keep the population going, though we haven't let them raise chicks so can't say for sure.

 

[jc681]

I'm in Tennessee. Summers are brutal, winters get pretty chilly. I'm looking for a flock to pretty much sustain itself on my land, no fences, but a coop to go into at night and food water supplemented for free ranging. Basically just a step above feral. Looking for meat and eggs and baby chick raising. Any suggestions for breeds to look at?

i would be very worried about predators they can virtually wipe out a flock in a night. Not to mention the horrible death and mutilation our feathered friends would go through whilst you could be sleeping.
I don’t like the sound of roosters fighting each other to toughen up either this is a form of cock fighting amongst themselves minus the money and so would be illegal here in Australia.
Could you come up with another idea whereby your feathered friends would be protected ..
Julie
Melbourne

 

[goldenyears]

Yes. Lower your expectations. Now lower them some more. Disappointed yet? Lower them even further.

Modern birds have been bred to be larger, lay more frequently, and often grow faster than their counterparts of even a hundred years ago. The consequences of all that breeding is that they are far more dependent upon us, and far more dependent upon a nutritionally complete modern feed/diet to perform.

Ancient breeds - jungle fowl - aren't particularly well suited to your climate, but free range extremely well (in their native conditions). They are also tough, not particularly meaty, lay only rarely, and not large eggs at that. Oh yeah, and free ranging means that they are likely to lay eggs all kinds of places you won't find them.

I'm in Fl, USDA Growing zone 8a - while occasionally hotter, I have a longer growing season than you do, a milder winter, and average 1" of rain+ weekly. I'm also on flatter ground than you likely enjoy in NC. You can see my efforts to create a free ranging birds suitable for local conditions, here. and you can see (incomplete) my efforts to bend my feed curve with a biodiverse polyculture, here. Tl;dr - a year of non-stop breeding and frequent culling has provided a couple misses which qualify as forward progress, and one hopefull. I should be pretty close to "there" in four to six years, at the current rate. ...and free ranging saves me 15-35% (seasonally dependant) on my feed costs, but also means that, at any given weight, my birds are more flavorful, have more chew, and took longer to arrive at weight than a similar bird raised in more conventional (coop and run, free feeding) conditions.

I have SLW. They are predator aware, a bit flighty, better free rangers than some of my others. I like them - smart birds. They also take 7 months to maturity, lay eggs maybe three days out of five, and the eggs are medium, sometimes medium-large, almost never large. Bigger than my purpose-built Comets (an RSL-type), the hens still only weigh 4.5-5# and took half a year to get there. SLW, BTW, were bred roughly 100+ years ago as an improvement upon the dual purpose breed, Brahma - which are (eventually) big birds, buit does it ever take forever for them to get there - and they lay no better than SLW, either.

People are breeding "Ranger" lines for improved meat on carcass, decent free ranging ability, and faster growth - but the very impressive numbers coming out of the best of those lines are still coming from very traditional management practices - not turning them loose, offering some feed, and engaging in magic ritual with hopes of success. "Fingers Crossed" is rarely a successful strategy, and never reliable, year over year. Neither is "hope and prayer", "a wing and a prayer", "blood for the blood god", or any other similar practice.

Modern birds were bred on the altar of technology. If you want them to perform at anything like their potential, you need to continue to sacrifice upon the altar of technology. If, instead, you wish to return to ancient roots, and ancient levels of performance - start a culling project, and prepare yourself for Bene Gesserit levels of patience in the creation of your Kwisatz Haderach.

Very Frank Herbert of you!