Ann.without.an.e Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 (edited) We’ve been really torn about this. We have 14 hens and one rooster and they have a nice large coop and run, but they’re bored and they’re taking it out on each other lately. We’d love to free range them even if it meant a small loss but we don’t want to lose too many. (ETA: Of course we’d hope to lose none, but a small loss is better than watching them be so mean to each other out of boredom.l). We have predators like coyotes and hawks etc. We rarely see dogs running around where we live so I don’t think we have to worry about lose dogs as much. Is it possible to free range and then lock them up at night without losing any or at least too many? Will they naturally come back to the coop later in the day? Any thoughts or help is greatly appreciated 😊 Edited March 5, 2022 by Ann.without.an.e Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mommyoffive Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 No real experience, but I see people doing that on Youtube. Some put some temporary fencing around the areas they let them free range. I see chickens free ranging all over by me at the farms. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faith-manor Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 4 minutes ago, Ann.without.an.e said: We’ve been really torn about this. We have 14 hens and one rooster and they have a nice large coop and run, but they’re bored and they’re taking it out on each other lately. We’d love to free range them even if it meant a small loss but we don’t want to lose too many. ETA: Of course we’d hope to lose none, but a small loss is better than watching them be so mean to each other out of boredom. We have predators like coyotes and hawks etc. We rarely see dogs running around where we live so I don’t think we have to worry about lose dogs as much. Is it possible to free range and then lock them up at night without losing any or at least too many? Will they naturally come back to the coop later in the day? Any thoughts or help is greatly appreciated 😊 I have a friend who did this. She had a fiber and horse farm, kept a nice bunch of chickens. They free ranged during the day, and she and the sheep dog rounded them up at night. Often they came in on their own when they heard her voice in the barn because they knew she would be putting out some feed, and lay liked their perches in the horse stall she used for a coop. The sheep dog was definitely a key because when Dan was around, predators seemed to stay away. Occasionally an owl or other small predator would get into the barn, and then she would lose a hen. It does produce free range eggs LOL so you have to get good at hunting them down to collect. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brittany1116 Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 Mine all head to the coop at dusk. The rooster is good about herding them. Hawks are a huge risk here, and I know a few people who have lost entire flocks slowly because of hawks. I would definitely advocate for putting them to bed at night. Also, as mentioned above, eggs can show up anywhere and be missed. Additionally, if you have any kind of garden going, it will likely be destroyed. Is there anyway you can just section off a larger part of the yard for a run? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Katy Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 You can also try a chicken tractor. It’s basically a run on wheels so you can move them around. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wintermom Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 (edited) My grandmother separated her hens into smaller pens. There would be fewer "gang ups" this way. Good luck! Edited March 5, 2022 by wintermom 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brittany1116 Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 5 minutes ago, wintermom said: My grandmother separated her hens into smaller pens. There were be fewer "gang ups" this way. Good luck! Good point. Most roosters like 6-7 hens. 14 might mean another roo is a good addition. Depends on age of flock and other factors, though. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xahm Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 We free range during the day when there is enough leaf cover to protect from hawks. It still isn't perfect and we've lost a few to determined hawks, but the survivors got more careful. Right now they are still all penned in until the trees leaf out. It's annoying a bit to have to go out right at dusk to lock them in. Any earlier and we are chasing chickens all over the place. Any later and we risk other critter attack. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitestavern Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 Ours have always headed up to the coop before dusk, with or without a rooster. We lock them up then. We’ve lost 2 in about 10-12 years. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indigo Blue Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 (edited) Deleted for privacy Edited March 6, 2022 by Indigo Blue 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ann.without.an.e Posted March 5, 2022 Author Share Posted March 5, 2022 Well, I let them out some today for the first time in the two years that we’ve had the flock. I tried it since I was working in the garden all morning. They really didn’t wander too far and mostly stayed on the edge of the woods or close to the coop. It all seemed to be fine until I came in for lunch. My dog (a pit) always barks at hawks and he’s good with the chickens. He stayed outside when I came in and I heard him start barking up a storm and I went out to find about 15 red tail hawks circling in the air. All the chickens but one had made their way into the coop so I scooped her up and put her in as well and closed it. The only reason things went ok all morning was we were out there so the hawks didn’t come close. I think we’ll have to be out there while they graze or just keep them cooped up until have an enclosed pasture built (on a huge list of things to do in the future). Ugh. It was worth a try but I think we’d lose too many if free ranged every day. 1 hour ago, Indigo Blue said: Please don’t quote!!! How far away are your neighbors? I don’t really think I have to worry about neighbors since they are all so far away (all have acreage). I really don’t want them digging up my landscaping though 😅 You are being beyond patient with your neighbors. Goodness, I would be having a Convo 😜 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indigo Blue Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 6 minutes ago, Ann.without.an.e said: I went out to find about 15 red tail hawks circling in the air. Yikes! It sounds like your dog did a good job! 15! That’s scary! Our neighbors are directly next to us. Like 1500 to 2000 feet. None of the animals have been over to the neighbor close on the other side of me. The chickens stay pretty close to home. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Idalou Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 (edited) Red tail hawks start to nest in Feb and March. Maybe other types, too. Be aware that they may choose an area near your yard, if they'd think it could have any easy supply of food during the nesting season. We had a baby hawk, or maybe even a parent, that made the most awful screeches one spring, our cat and dogs were all terrified. I thought they'd never shut up. Edited March 5, 2022 by Idalou Spelling 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melissa in Australia Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 (edited) We have chooks, we keep them locked up mostly because we have sand, no soil, and the chooks moonscape the whole area very quickly we have a neighbour with 2 chooks. He completely free ranges. And hardly ever feeds. They spend a lot of time over here scratching up shrubs I try to grow and trying to get into my flower gardens. I wasn’t happy in spring when they ripped up 40 dailia plants that I had grown from seeds. I am forever chasing them back to his place..they now know if they hear the screen door open to run home. We live in 5 acre blocks Edited March 5, 2022 by Melissa in Australia 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
plansrme Posted March 5, 2022 Share Posted March 5, 2022 My 6 free range the fenced backyard during the day and make their own way to their coop at night. We refer to it as the chicken parade, because they all decide at once, "Welp, bedtime," and walk up the ramp. I close the run attached to their coop at night before I go to bed. We have hawks also, but we also have plenty of trees and shrubs, and they learn quickly not to hang out in the grassy middle of the yard when hawks are present. I mean, really quickly. I keep their feed and water under the overhanging nesting box on the coop so they can eat and drink without having to watch for hawks. I do not have a rooster, but I've heard roosters are good about sounding an alarm when a predator is near, so your girls might be safer than you think. Also, there are automatic coop doors you can get that supposedly work very well to close them in at dusk and open at dawn so you don't have to remember. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanin Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 My neighbors diagonally have very pretty chickens but they do scratch up my yard and poop on my driveway 😒 the chickens manage to cross roads just fine. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Drama Llama Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 7 minutes ago, Kanin said: My neighbors diagonally have very pretty chickens but they do scratch up my yard and poop on my driveway 😒 the chickens manage to cross roads just fine. We finally know know the answer! ”Why did the chickens cross the road?” ”To poop on Kanin’s driveway.” 7 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ann.without.an.e Posted March 6, 2022 Author Share Posted March 6, 2022 19 hours ago, Indigo Blue said: Deleted for privacy Is this your neighbor 😂 https://www.instagram.com/reel/CaryKcVj3yy/?utm_medium=copy_link 1 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
madteaparty Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 I’ve always free ranged mine. Small losses occasionally but that’s the cost I guess, and I’m willing to pay it because they eat ticks and such The rooster does help. If we have repeated attacks, we lock them up for a week or so. we let them out in the morning and close the coop door at dusk. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Indigo Blue Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 (edited) 1 hour ago, Ann.without.an.e said: Is this your neighbor 😂 https://www.instagram.com/reel/CaryKcVj3yy/?utm_medium=copy_link Thanks for that!! That made me laugh so hard. So adorable. My sons will get a laugh from this, because I’ve sent them lots of pics and videos of my “farm”, lol. When my older son was in high school, he stayed on a college campus for a few days for governor’s school. It was in town, but oddly, there was a flock of guinea fowl just like the ones in my yard,lol, and they chased him down the sidewalk every time he had to pass by! He was terrified of them. He didn’t know what they would do, and he didn’t want to find out! My younger son was traumatized by Canada geese while attending community college. He had walked outside for break and couldn’t get the door open to get back in. Several of them were chasing after him aggressively as he frantically tried to get inside. So, they’ve both been traumatized by large birds, and I got a laugh out of texting older ds a picture of his long-forgotten friends! And right now, we’ve got some free range eggs 🥚 under the bushes that we’ve got to give to the neighbors. I don’t eat them. They make me gag. 🤢 Edited March 6, 2022 by Indigo Blue Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kalmia Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 (edited) Of the of 26 hen flock we had before we moved to a suburb where chickens couldn't be kept, we lost 4 to predators, hawks and a fox. Most of chickens could fly a little bit (like up to a branch in a tree) for safety. All but three were highly alert to overhead threats, running under the deck for shelter. The three polish hens had the puffy feathers all over their heads that make them less able to detect danger from above and all of those were victims of our local hawk over time. We had a pack of coyotes in the neighborhood, but those were not active during the day, and we did not loose any to them. All the hens would move closer to the coop as it got late in the afternoon and would go inside at dusk on their own. They still laid most of their eggs in the coop. A couple of times hens I thought had disappeared had gone broody and were incubating (infertile) eggs under the brambles somewhere. All the neighbors we gave the eggs to said they were the best eggs they had tasted in their lives (probably all the greens and insects and worms and mice and chipmunks! they ate). I would say we lost more hens to extreme cold or illness than predators. The flock was housed in the barn with heat lamps (which are a big cause of barn fires, so I am not recommending them) but -20 is cold and the hens wouldn't always sleep under the lamps. I felt much worse and more responsible for those deaths than I did about than the hawks and fox picking off one at a time. (Though raccoons and weasels are brutal chicken slayers, so I might have a different feeling if I had come found carnage in the coop). If you have chickens you have to be comfortable losing them to many dangers. We don't have any now, though we moved back to the country. I lost a couple of cats to old age recently and am not interested in setting myself up for sadness at the moment. But that might change. Edited March 6, 2022 by Kalmia Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanin Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 14 hours ago, Baseballandhockey said: We finally know know the answer! ”Why did the chickens cross the road?” ”To poop on Kanin’s driveway.” It seems so!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kanin Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 2 hours ago, Ann.without.an.e said: Is this your neighbor 😂 https://www.instagram.com/reel/CaryKcVj3yy/?utm_medium=copy_link YES! Except the neighbor doesn't come get them. I open my door and hear "SQUAWK, FLAP FLAP RUSTLE RUSTLE SQUAWK!!" and there are chickens chilling out along the foundation of my house. Add in those Joro spiders and I'm going to lose it! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Spy Car Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 On 3/5/2022 at 12:18 PM, Idalou said: Red tail hawks start to nest in Feb and March. Maybe other types, too. Be aware that they may choose an area near your yard, if they'd think it could have any easy supply of food during the nesting season. We had a baby hawk, or maybe even a parent, that made the most awful screeches one spring, our cat and dogs were all terrified. I thought they'd never shut up. We had a red tail hawk fly into our coop (which we kept open during the day to let our flock free-range in out backyard). There were a couple hens inside eating. I ran toward the coop from inside the house, but before I got there our rooster few into the coop and attacked the hawk, driving him out. I was astonished. We had Rhode Island Red "bantams," so the rooster was much smaller than a full sized rooster. Didn't deter him from attack. I awarded him a Medal of Valor. Bill 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Faith-manor Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 55 minutes ago, Spy Car said: We had a red tail hawk fly into our coop (which we kept open during the day to let our flock free-range in out backyard). There were a couple hens inside eating. I ran toward the coop from inside the house, but before I got there our rooster few into the coop and attacked the hawk, driving him out. I was astonished. We had Rhode Island Red "bantams," so the rooster was much smaller than a full sized rooster. Didn't deter him from attack. I awarded him a Medal of Valor. Bill That was really nice of your roo. I like to hear when a roo makes an effort. My friend's roosters were all just brutal, serial rapists who couldn't be bothered to worry about anything coming to eat their women. They maybe weren't quite as deranged as the drakes, but they really tried hard to be awarded a space in the stock pot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
livetoread Posted March 6, 2022 Share Posted March 6, 2022 When my father was growing up, his parents had chickens for awhile including a rooster. The rooster hated my dad because Dad would tease the rooster by calling the hens over for tasty treats using the same calls the rooster would make. The rooster saw him as a rival, and would fly into a rage. Dad still has a scar on his ankle for when the rooster managed to get his spurs into him. He said the rooster was quite protective of his hens and took his job seriously, lol. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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