Do you free range your chickens?

[Snicketysnoksnaksnik]

I free-range my chickens. Yes I do a slight predator problem but not due to hawks or weasels, in fact the only predator that kills my chickens is spiders.
When the chickens used to be in a coop there was so many predation issues that free-ranging for me is safer

 

[TimonHens]

Ooo we just had our first fox chomp this morning!
It's sunny and warming up so the girls apparently scattered well and wide to chase the sun. Husband heard the calls and saw the culprit fleeing and eventually found the feather pile from the victim.
Suddenly everyone else is very close to the house...and perhaps I will tweak the fencing a little bit to enclose where they seem to prefer in the mornings.
Not one of our personable hens, and now our crisis of excess eggs is slightly relieved?

 

[Sandy Berry]

My chickens have a fenced yard that they dwell in freely every day, but I also let them free range outside of that yard (which is quite large) when I am home & running in & out... mainly so that I can run them back in if they get outside of my property. I agree with the others, that's just a choice to be made by you. Either way there are risks involved. I would like to say though, that I have had up to 25 cats (due to a neighbor abandoning them), for longer than I've had chickens (approximately 5 years), & I have never had a cat to bother a chicken. I just wanted to clarify that because so many people count cats as predators. Just my opinion, of course. Good luck with whichever choice you make!

 

[BigBlueHen53]

My chickens have a fenced yard that they dwell in freely every day, but I also let them free range outside of that yard (which is quite large) when I am home & running in & out... mainly so that I can run them back in if they get outside of my property. I agree with the others, that's just a choice to be made by you. Either way there are risks involved. I would like to say though, that I have had up to 25 cats (due to a neighbor abandoning them), for longer than I've had chickens (approximately 5 years), & I have never had a cat to bother a chicken. I just wanted to clarify that because so many people count cats as predators. Just my opinion, of course. Good luck with whichever choice you make!

When we get baby chicks, we keep them protected from our two cats (and the dogs) until they are about six weeks old. By that time they no longer look like little baby birds and are starting to look a lot more like scrawny young chickens. We also start integrating them with the older birds so they're harder to pick out. We've never lost a chick or chicken to a cat or one of our own dogs.

 

[Ponyiqandhens2]

When I was living in a rural area, as a kid, we had chickens free range all day... Well all night too actually, because they didn't even have a coop proper. They had high perches and hay filled old wooden drawers, nailed high up on the walls too, in the horse shed. We only once had a problem with a smart fox who figured out how to frighten them into flying down from their roosts, and thus managed to get to them that way. It's worth noting that those were bantam/game-like chickens - small and quite good at flying if they needed to, so it might have helped.

This is what we do..I have a coop, but the birds prefer to roost under my back porch with an old fridge,freezer, workbench and shelving..concrete floor..they usually roost at head height or so, even the heavy birds, they do short flights working their way up and down.. we have a possum ( old been around forever) lives under the tackroom..butbetween cat food. And scraps he's too old to do much more.. he isobese and has obviously been on the loosing end of fights er the years..I find the barn catssleepingwith the hens oron the eggs in the nest boxes.. we have hawks,coyotes,bobcats and everything I. Between..and I may loose one eventually but it seems to work and I am finding the chickens very savvy.. the Rooster is very aware..several are bantams/etc ..

 

[lori_smith99]

my compromise was to fence in a 60x60 enclosure behind their predator proof coop/run in a wooded area for them to graze in.

That's what we do as well. We have our night coop and then a fenced free range area in front of it so that it is connected. Works great. And I have a camera out there to watch for predators like dogs or cats.

 

[Ponyiqandhens2]

That depends on the bird.

I had a Brahma who, after she hit POL, was so heavy that her maximum flight capability -- when powerfully motivated by the thought that someone else was getting a treat she wasn't sharing -- was about 18".

I have seen a 6-month-old OE cockerel make it up to a 10-foot roof by stages and his brother make the top of a standard-height door in one flight.

I find that the worst birds for flying out of the run are the POL pullets.

At least 4 feet, maybe 6 feet for lighter birds. But there are ways to make them less likely to go over any given fence. Primarily, to make the top too flimsy to land on because few birds (other than my first California White), intentionally go up and over. Usually they either go up because they're startled or something and randomly come down on one side or the other or they go up, perch on the top, and then decide which side to come down on.

(That CW, Chipotle, was smart enough to fly back into a pen she flew out of when she was done with whatever she was doing out there).

I have a golden sebright pullet that routinely flies up onto my roof,looks around,flies off..everyone of my birds ( eggers in stages,onto a 6 ft high box fan industrial) then 4 feet to the top board of the dog kennel..astralorp does it as well, the bantams just fly right over) my spangled oeg flies 60-70 feet across the yard as well as onto the roof..my d'uccle is better with low but long distances,with turns but if spooked she has no trouble with height

 

[raingarden]

I'm going to rent my birds out as roof cleaners. Just throw some whole kernal corn up into the accumulated leaf litter every day and they will go up and scratch everything around so it blows off or washes off in the next storm.

 

[BigBlueHen53]

Not free ranging at the mo. New neighbor's dog got one last week. Steps being taken to chicken-proof said dog; hopefully free-ranging will re-commence some time next week.

 

[drangle]

I do, we have coyotes, birds of prey, raccoons, and foxes. I am not too worried about them in the day time. my biggest issue is making sure I get them rounded up and closed in the run at dusk or the foxes will kill them all and come back to get them later.

I used to like foxes before i had chickens, now i hate them.