Two of my neighbors have chickens (just within the last year and a half) and they're out roaming around, at least most of the day. What I would like to know is whether this attracts predators to the extent that they (the predators) stay nearby when they wouldn't otherwise? It seems like it would to me. But wouldn't all the chickens be killed after a while? We live in a small country subdivision and pets (small dogs and cats mostly) are disappearing quite often this year. We lost one recently, another family in the area lost two in the last year, one family lost four...just as examples. I also throught about the drought of two years followed this year by really excessive rain. The rainfall and increased growth of plants and whatever they eat has been blamed for the influx of bands of wild hogs, I hear. Then there's the large ranch nearby, which is now in the hands of developers. Nothing really done to develop it so far, but I'm thinking maybe the livestock may have been sold off and probably noone is shooting and trapping the predators over there the way it has been done in the past. I thought maybe some people who live in the country might know something about this.
This message was edited Nov 2, 2007 5:58 PM
Free Range Chickens and Predators
I can tell you my experience. I free ranged my first flock and it was a very dumb thing to do. All it took was one neighbor letting their dog roam one time and every single chicken was killed. That's not to mention the raccoons, minks, foxes, hawks, coyotes and the other predators around here that could have gotten them.
It's not that hard or that expensive to make them a nice big and secure pen and they're perfectly happy in that. And they're a lot safer.
If you have dogs and cats disappearing, chickens wouldn't stand a chance.
That's what I thought! Go figure...I wonder how many have been killed. Yet almost every day I hear or see them. I'm thinking they are probably locked up at night, but still....so are my pets. There's one neighbor who has two dogs kept in a well-fenced yard. But they get out anyway. I hear him calling them or he is out looking for them from time to time.
LindaTX8, I'd say that all of the dual purpose or egg laying breeds of chickens are precisely what Hart in Shendandoah said. A few breeds of chicken ... like the Game Fowl breed are more wary and fly better and are able to evade the predators. Cats and small disappearing sounds like coyotes. Coyotes are able to get a cat with ease and a lap dog .... is dead meat when facing a coyote. If one has the Game Fowl breed ..... a chicken farmer can ride out coyote attacks because the hens reproduce chicks at a a rate of 15 to 1 annually. I suspect your neighbors with chickens have them a bit more secure than you surmise. I had an identical massacre experience as Hart when I bought my 1st group of 75 chicks ..... lost 25 in a single dog attack. I spent $1500 on fencing to keep my boy 10 month old son as well as the chickens very well confined and quite secure. The boy is almost 6 now and I still have 30 chickens, 8 guineas, 4 ducks & about 55 floating Game Fowl. The Game Fowl are close to wild. The sleep in our trees and scratch for feed in the 50 acres to the west as well as on my 20+ acres. They don't wander too far because they sense there are coyotes out and about. My neighbor & I share them. They kinda remind one of Chinese Ringneck Pheasants but they don't fly quite as far.