EGGS!!!!

There are a lot of if's involved. If you can totally free range them (not have to build fences), let them sleep where the wish (maybe in trees or an old barn, don't build a coop and lock them up at night), if you live where there isn't much snow, if you have adequate forage, if they hatch their own chicks and raise them (no incubators and no brooders), if you don't have to hatch a certain number of chicks each year but accept what the broody hens can do, if you have a lot of territory for them to cover, if you are OK with decent eggs instead of trying for double extra huge, if you don't mind eating smaller chickens, if you are not interested in showing chickens, if you raise your own feed if you need to supplement their feed in winter (never buy feed and count your labor as free), if you don't mind searching for nests instead of them all laying in the coop if you have one, if you can handle an occasional loss to a predator, and who knows how many other "if's", they can be pretty free.

By good forage I don't just mean bugs. They eat a lot of grass, weeds, grass and weed seeds, scratch in decaying matter, and eat about anything that doesn't eat them first (do lunch or be lunch). They really like mice, frogs, and small snakes. They love scratching in animal manure, such as cattle or horses, for bits of partially digested matter plus, if they are lucky, maggots. Having a hay loft where they can forage in winter or bad weather can help. With all this they do not need kitchen or garden scraps, our scraps went to the pigs, not the chickens. A manicured lawn doesn't give the a lot of variety in forage, but pasture fields that allow grass and weeds to go to seed or maybe orchards dropping fruit are good.

This is pretty much how Mom and Dad raised their chickens. I can remember losing adult chickens to predators only twice, once a fox and once a dog, though a snake might rarely take a young chick. We did not get much snow, when we did we fed them corn we grew to help them get by. We did have a coop where most of them lay eggs and slept at night, but plenty slept in trees and occasionally the hay barn. It was my job to find the nests not in the coop, some of those were in creative places. While there was some Dominique, New Hampshire, and probably White Rock mixed in with them there was a lot of game in the mix too. Game are smaller, great at foraging, and go broody a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if they were partially descended from the chickens my pioneer ancestors brought with them when they moved into that area in the early 1800's.

There was practically no expense involved and other than growing, harvesting, and storing corn, there wasn't much work involved. The corn was mostly for horses, the milk cow, and pigs anyway, the chickens didn't get much. We'd grind some for corn meal too for us. The corn the chickens got was pretty marginal in the greater scheme of things.

I don't know of anyone on this forum that can meet these conditions or manage these expectations. I sure can't in many respects. I know many are unbelieving, it just isn't possible. For us it isn't. But it is a model for how small farmers kept chickens for thousands of years all around the globe. In undeveloped countries especially, some still do.
 
One of hens escaped the run yesterday and she was gobbling down chickgrass, which they don't prefer when there is something better. I think I'll dig chickgrass out this winter and fill with horse stall waste bc it has spread.
If I let my chickens free range they would soon learn to flutter up to my barn loft and poo all over my horse's hay and that is a felony...punishable by Freezer Camp.
 
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@Ridgerunner You described exactly how my G'Pa raised chickens. They were games. Good luck trying to take one of their chicks....
 
Nyboy said:
That is amazing with freeranging you can only remember 2 losts. What type of dogs did your parents keep ?
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Most of the time we did not have any dogs. When we did it was a mongrel mutt we got as a pup from my aunt, maybe around 45 to 50 pounds and part hound. Neighbors did have dogs though, especially the ones up the hill that had beagles. Great rabbit hunting dogs.

Actually we lost more than 1 with each attack, it was just two attacks.

I could go into a lot of theory and opinion why we had such few attacks. Fence rows were kept cleaned out. A lot of people hunted, especially teenaged boys that just might shot a potential predator if they happened to see one. I sure would. People did not leave food out overnight to attract pests. If a problem did come up, it was immediately taken care of by people that could hit what they shot at. People did not live on top of each other, so there were fewer dog and cats around and others nearby not feeding the wildlife. I really don't know why we had such few attacks, but the neighbors and relatives that kept chickens had similar experiences. I know I could not do that here.
 
My chickens free-range during the day but return to the coop for egg laying and night roosting, Trying to find eggs in 30 acres is not my idea of a good time. With the birds eating and ranging free, I still have a feed bill. Just, hopefully, not as large as restricting the birds would be.

Knocking on all the wood I can find .. .. I've had chickens for 6-7 years now with no losses due to preditors. 30 years ago I lost several birds to racoon activity before Spouse got up at midnight and shot it.
 
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