Free Range-looking for advice

flowerbug

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small chicken tractor for habit and some protection and movable fencing for some protection and control when you want to move them to a new location. they can raze an area too much if left too long. rotate and watch your diversity. use them to clear a garden space of weeds and bugs then move them to some other spot and plant away. that's about all i know from reading and have never done it. :)
 

CrealCritter

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My wife had a free range flock last year, a roo and 6 hens. They liked to cross the road and visit our neighbors. The roo would wake them up at sunrise. My neighbor still laughs about it 😂.

Eagles picked them off one by one and all she had left was one hen. Which is in with the laying hens now in a fenced yard.

It was sure was fun watching them but there is too much wild life around here for free range chickens, plus eagles are cool.

Jesus is Lord and Christ 🙏❤️🇺🇸
 

farmerjan

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Wow, that would be incredibly disheartening! :(
It was more than just disheartening..... it was past ridiculous. And many of the eagles in this area are chipped so you can't SSS. Listened to some neighbors that just thought the eagle was soooooo beautiful.... and then complained when I was getting $5 doz for free range pastured hen eggs.... yet they also said it was such a shame that more people didn't have chickens that weren't in a pen.... and they are in a subdivision that has so many restrictive covenants that you can't have even "pet chickens"..... :he:he:rant:rant.

Couldn't shoot the miserable eagle... and I finally quit raising and selling eggs.... The whole idea was to have them out at pasture following the cattle around and helping to spread the cow patties and eating fly larvae and such in the piles...
 

farmerjan

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Talked to the wildlife guy.... these eagles had been relocated to an area a little ways off with a river for fishing access... was told there was nothing they could do... we had to fence/pen the livestock from the eagle.
This eagle found better pickings than to have to actually fish or hunt for his meal..... I mean really.... why work for a meal when it is being handed to you.....
No, there is no way to get a permit to dispense with the eagle. The sorry s.o.b. was sitting eating a hen right by the coop/trailer when I drove up with water and all one day after letting them out earlier... It dared me to come close to the door to the trailer... Wings spread, practically hissing and coming....hopping like..... towards me.... good thing I didn't have the gun with me that trip or it would have been dead.... I had a shovel in the back of the truck and took a couple swings at it and it finally took off....
They may be "majestic" to look at... but out west of here in the next county, they will attack and kill and take off with baby lambs. Farmers out there hate them with a passion and they are called "white headed vultures"... been a few found mysteriously dead.....
 
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