How To Have Free Range Backyard Chickens

Regardless of if you choose to free range or coop your chickens you ll need to feed them a high quality poultry feed.

How to have free range backyard chickens.

A free range backyard chicken keeper must hunt for both predators and hens eggs for hens don t necessarily lay them in nesting boxes when they have access to natural hiding places. Free range chickens have access to a varied diet of plants and insects good protein sources to supplement their feed. This will be our second year with our chickens and we started out with four on was killed by a crow so we knew we had to cover the top of their outside area now we have 16 chickens and they have a large chicken coop with a large free range to go in and out freely and a nestling area that we can use to just lift up the hinged top to collect. Giving your chickens free range is healthy for the chickens and for you.

Studies have also shown that eggs from free range hens have lower levels of bad cholesterol. Neighbors don t want chickens destroying their gardens and drivers don t want them in the streets. If you don t want them to free range you could always use a chicken tractor. And while many fences may help contain chickens they do little to keep out predators.

We designed our chicken coop and runs with a 3 pasture rotational system. You can read all about should i free range my chickens here. If you have a fenced yard you can often convince chickens by shaking a grain bucket to follow you to the garden back to the coop. Regardless of whether this is contained or free range.

If you free range or pen range your flock you ll need to just supplement their diet they ll get a lot of their nutrition from the bugs and plants they pick out of the ground. It s common for chicken coops to be close to the garden or your free range areas. Just remember that while fences will help contain your flock chickens can and do fly over them. In the discussion of raising chickens there have been two traditional schools of thought.

If not a chicken tractor is the best way to move chickens. The other school of thought has been confinement to a secure chicken run and coop. The first is total free range.