A stressed chicken will not lay.
A starved chicken will not lay, and the other chickens will break and devour the eggs that are laid.
A debeaked chicken will not cannibalize other chickens. Only about 1/8 of the tip of the upper beak is removed from the baby chick.
Small coop doors help keep PREDATORS out. I lost my last flock to predator.
Too many roosters will fight each other and cause havoc and stress in the coop.
New chickens introduced into a flock will be thrashed and whipped without mercy by the older hens.
Free range chickens require constant monitoring because the chickens will often hide the eggs. Caged chickens don't.
The OLDEN method of raising free range chickens. You feed cattle, some food passes through undigested.
You run hogs after the cattle which eat the manure. Some of that feed will not be digested and passes through.
You run chickens behind the hogs to get the undigested feed in the manure.
Any chicken that dies is thrown to the hogs.
Now THAT is a free range chicken!
Think of it when you crack an egg.
Good history/animal production lesson, and probably where the Luddites want to take us.
After being in animal production for so long, I’d long forgotten how it was when I was a kid. Seeing all that first hand has had an effect on the type of foods I want to eat today.
My dad used to raise turkey’s. He had them on the range after they were big enough. Large alfalfa fields with open turkey shelters (basically just large roofs) for sun and rain protection.
The problem with domesticated turkeys is that they are stupid. They would run out into the rain, looking up into the sky. The rain would run down their beaks, into the nostril openings, and they would drown by the hundreds.
Was using open range for those turkeys an ‘animals quality of life’ issue, to use the phrase of someone upthread?
It is obvious someone has never raised a chicken and knows nothing about how to do it so the animal is healthy and well.
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Absolutely right!!!! I raise chickens too. PEOPLE who grow up in rural environments learn about life and death and survival in the REAL WORLD. In addition to what he has outlined, you soon learn to get over eating your “pets”. Eating t-bones and hamburgers from “Brownie” the tender calf. Eating fried chicken from “Cocky” the expendable rooster. Eating baked chicken from old “Henrietta” the spent hen. Eating bacon, ham, and sausage from “Porky” the pig.
All the while, predators and varmits of every descriptions will be glad to kill and eat your animals leaving the left over parts for you and buzzards. Its a challenge against nature to survive by your own endeavors. Something, a lot of people are too ignorant accept in the digital age.
Animals provide food for our tables. Free range sounds good, but in realty ever witness dead or injured chickens that have been attacked by a varmit. Not a pretty sight...
And try finding those free range eggs, a daily Easter hunt. I particularly don’t know how long those eggs have been laying around in 100 degree sun before I found them. Enjoy those free range eggs and think about that...
Also, ever have to “put down” a sick animal or a varmit you have trapped?
I’m so old, I remember when we had to arm ourselves to prevent thieves or varmits from stealing our animals. And a well placed shot into a varmit resolves that issue in a humanely way.
Argh, sometimes I hate FR’s ancient web program. I had a whole bunch of stuff started for you and I got back here and it is all gone. Let me try again, saving it each time. Bah, FR! For all the $ we send, upgrade the site!
I have never raised chickens so you have that expertise over me.
This is from where I get my eggs:
All the different terms on egg cartons - ‘free-range’, ‘cage-free’, ‘added this’, ‘added that’ - can be confusing and misleading, and Big Egg-riculture is more than happy to keep it that way. But what we mean by pasture-raising is different. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Start with healthy, green, organic pastures. Sunlight and fresh air. This is where our hens live every day and spend all their time, foraging, dust-bathing, just doing regular chicken things. Every night we round them up (and you can imagine how much fun that is) and tuck them up for the night in little barns or mobile units, but come sunrise, we open the doors and get out of the way, so they are free to come and go as they please. Farming like this requires a whole lot of space! We require that every birds under our farmers’ care live on at least 108 sq.ft. of pasture during daylight hours. This number is also the gold standard for pasture-raising as defined by Certified Humane® , the most respected third-party Animal Welfare Certification Agency in the country. Our girls are voracious omnivores - it’s in their nature - which means they’ll eat just about anything they find out in the fields - grasses, weeds, bugs and worms - and it’s this varied diet that makes their eggs so amazing. Every few days we move them onto a new patch of grass, which keeps them on the freshest, most delicious greens, and ensures that the pastures have plenty of time to recover. Of course, our girls help this along by leaving behind the best organic fertilizer on the planet so that we don’t need to! When our girls are happy, our pastures are fresh, and vice versa! We never use any pesticides or herbicides, ever, so we know we’re not polluting the waters that we all share. Though the girls are always out foraging for food on the pastures, we provide them with a supplemental feed as well to keep them well fed and laying those beautiful eggs. Our feed is 100% vegetarian, antibiotic and hormone free - but, depending on the flock, it may also be Certified Organic or non-GMO. And that’s just about it. Nothing new or fancy. Sure there’s a little bit of heavy lifting now and then, but it’s the girls that do all the work! We just collect the eggs twice a day and get them out for y’all to enjoy!
And this is the kind of thing you can read all over the web about cage free chickens:
“Cage-free” means that, while the hens are not squeezed into small wire cages, they never go outside. “Cage-free” hens are typically confined in dark, crowded buildings filled with toxic gases and disease microbes the same as their battery-caged sisters. And like their battery-caged sisters, they are painfully debeaked at the hatchery. While chickens are designed to dig in the ground for food with their beaks and claws, when deprived of outlets suited to their energies and interests, they can be driven to peck at each other, having nothing to do with their time once they’ve laid their egg for the day in a barren building. Chickens love sunlight - they sunbathe daily outdoors - but “cage-free” hens are denied even this simple pleasure.