Hello farmy friends! As you may know, I don’t fancy myself to be one of the online chicken experts. I do, however, raise my chickens differently than a lot of people I know, so I thought maybe it was time to talk about how I raise my free range chickens and why. My system is far from perfect, however, and there are drawbacks, so I will share those with you as well.
Most chicken keepers I know raise their chickens in coops with attached, fully-enclosed run areas. For the most part, I really do understand why they do it this way. Some have yards too small to ensure that their chickens stay home. Others have ongoing predator problems. Still others are breeding their chickens and need to ensure that they aren’t selling “mutt” chickens to their customers. None of these situations particularly apply to me, however, so we take a different approach.
With the exception of our broilers (meat chickens), who are raised in a mobile pasture shelter, our chickens are allowed to free range all day long. It gives me great joy to look out into the yard and watch chickens pecking, scratching, lounging and generally just being chickens. They range all over our yard and sometimes into the neighbors’ pastures. (Luckily none of our adjacent neighbors mind, and occasionally a chicken leaves a “thank you egg” in the neighboring barn.)
This next part will probably get me in trouble with the chicken police. Can you handle the truth?
At night we always lock the chicken coop (which is built into our barn) up tight, but to be completely honest with you, many of my naughty chickens choose to roost up very high in the main section of our barn instead. For weeks we tried to break them of this habit, but they kept going higher and higher until we decided that if we couldn’t get to them, predators would have a mighty hard time as well.
So, with this being said, here are some pros and cons of free range chickens.
Free Range Chicken Pros:
- Entertainment. Watching chickens’ natural antics is fun!
- Chickens are free to be themselves and do what they do. As Joel Salatin says, we are embracing the “chicken-ness of the chicken.”
- Money Savings. Every bug and blade of grass they eat is one bite of food I didn’t have to pay for! Free range chickens are able to forage for a large amount of their own food and they LOVE doing it! In fact, did you know that chickens LOVE cow poop???
- Pest Control. Chickens love eating bugs! We have very few bug problems here due to our chickens love of mosquitoes and other insects!
- Fertilized Lawn. Let’s face it, chickens poop A LOT! When they free range, they fertilize your yard or pasture as they go and it leaves you with much less work when it comes time to scoop the poop in the coop!
Free Range Chicken Cons:
- Poop Everywhere. When unrestrained, chickens poop wherever they are. Often that is on your back deck or in the carport. You have to be pretty tolerant of poop or this won’t work for you.
- Predators. When your chickens are out roaming around, so are things that like to eat chickens. (I hate losing birds, but sometimes I have to remind myself that they lived a GREAT life in the time they had. Still, this is a major drawback.)
- Angry Neighbors. I’m lucky in this department, but make sure you are on great terms with your neighbors if your birds might decide to go visiting.
- Cars. We have, unfortunately, had a few birds wander into the street. I always go chase them back if I see them, but we have suffered a few losses to cars, so it is a real concern.
- No control over breeding. We keep a mixed flock, so we know that any chicks born here will be mixed-breeds. It hasn’t been a problem so far because we don’t sell chickens. If we did, however, we would need to keep only one breed.
- Easter Egg Hunts Everyday. Despite having nice nest boxes, our chickens like to choose their own laying spots. If we collect eggs from one spot for too long, they will choose a new spot. Thus, we have an Easter egg hunt everyday and sometimes it gets really old. I know people driving by think I’m nuts when I’m walking stooped over trying to see under the barn, often with a load of eggs cradled in my shirt tail!
I love my free range chickens, but it is certainly not for everyone. What about you? Do you free range? Do you have anything to add to my list? Be sure to leave me a comment and let me know!
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What a great post! I totally agree with you. I love free ranging our birds and I think the pros vastly outweigh the cons. We really don’t have big problems with predators in the city though, so my opinion might change when we move the country!
This is a great “inside look” to free range chickens! I’ve heard lots of pros/cons to free ranging, but I feel like in the future I will free range so it’s as natural as possible. Thanks for giving a review of your experience so far!
I hope you love free ranging as much as I do!
Love this! I lock my flock up at night but other than that we are just about the same! I totally understand the stooping and crawling around the yard everyday looking for eggs. I’m sure our neighbors get a good laugh.
LOL! My neighbors just roll their eyes at whatever crazy thing I’m doing now and go on about their business. 🙂
We live on a farm, however we don’t farm it, it’s rented out to actual farmers 😉 We have hens only and let them free range for 30-60 minutes, 2-3x a day (depending on whatcwe have going on). We live right on a very busy street and therefore feel we need to keep a watchful eye on them. Plus Hawks are very prevalent here too. I look forward to moving to a more country location to allow more free ranging. I do love watching them do their chicken things – I’ve taken loads of pictures & videos!!
Maybe you could make a few dummy eggs to leave at their laying spots around the yard. That way you could collect the real fresh eggs and they would continue to lay in the same spots so you already know about, thereby keeping your hunting to a minimum. Just an idea. We trained our chickens to use their nesting boxes with golf balls. Best of luck to you. We tried the free range method but couldn’t handle all that poop 🙂
Golf balls are a good idea! Perhaps I’ll try that!
And the poop is a lot to take! 🙂
I LOVE the idea of using a golf ball to train them! Our hens lay in the bushes in front of our house. We are planning a coop remodel and I would sure rather them lay in their coop.
I’m new to the whole chicken game and have tons of questions about free ranging but my number one concern is that I live in the desert and there is no grass for them to forage in, do you think they would still be ok?
Erin, I would assume they would still be ok, you just might need to provide more feed than I do here.
Hi! I am so tickled to come across your website this evening! I am new to chicken raisin’ and honestly feel like I may not be strong enough to do free-range, as I have now lost five chickens just this summer. Three fell prey to a predator (quite possibly the neighbor dog) and two went out to the road and were hit by a car. We live on two acres lined with pine trees – to the back are fields of clover; and a lot of land separates us from the road, still two hens managed to get out there before I noticed they were missing.
My heart is just sick and I feel so much guilt. I really want to let them live a life of pecking and roaming, but how many is too many to lose? I have two nearly grown hens now and just purchased three baby chicks to try this again. I am extremely hesitant to do free range this time around.
It’s definitely not for every situation. Perhaps a covered run and supervised trips out would strike a nice balance. Best of luck on your chicken keeping, and thanks for reading!
Mine were totally free at first but a combination of poop in the carport, dust baths in my beauty bark, and lots of eagles (and by lots I mean multiple fly bys per day by more than two eagles) forced me to contain them. They do, however, still have almost enough room to call it free range. I fenced in the orchard area of over 30 dwarf fruit trees so there is still lots of room. I love watching my chickens.
My chickens also free range, but tend to stay within about 100 yards of the barn. I periodically have to run mine out of trees but it’s usually after the hens have gone up to avoid the overzealous too. I use golf balls in the nest boxes and it seems to work. The only other place I find an egg is right beside the preferred box. I guess when you’ve got to go…
My solution to the poop in the yard and on the porch was a power washer and electric netting. Usually I don’t care, I just hose it off, but if we’re having company that might like to sit on the porch or walk through the yard, I just use the temporary fence (I bought mine from Premier 1 fence) to keep them out for a few days to let any poo dry.
How do you introduce a rooster to an established flock? When I did the girls attacked him violently so we put him in a dog crate next to the run to see if they might get used to him. No luck yet and he crows all day.
Obviously I am terribly late answering this as I have let myself get terribly behind. We have never had a problem introducing a rooster, although we have only done it a few times. I do currently have laying hens that don’t get along with the Polish hens. Chicken socialization behavior is terribly interesting, isn’t it?