Free Range Chickens

We have decided to let our chickens "free-range" on our property. We have about four unused acres that they are allowed to wander on as they please.  There are dangers, we lost two to a hawk and one to a friend's dog, but there are benefits. I just love watching them (you can see a video of them below), but being free-range also means that they get to forage for whatever bugs and seeds they can find and we don't need to worry about feeding them grit. Plus, they just look happy.

We knew that hawks were the biggest predator risk during the day, but the chickens seemed to know to stay under the bushes when they were out. Initially, we would stay outside with them to keep an eye on them when we let them out, but we couldn't stay out with them forever, so one day my husband went inside for a while and left them out alone. When he went back out, he found one of our Brahmas in a bush, dead. He picked it up to examine it and the only damage that he found was a single puncture wound on its back. Our guess is that the hawk tried to get it, but couldn't lift it (the Brahmas are the biggest of our chickens) and either dropped it in the bush or the chicken got away and ran to the bush before it died. Ron looked around for all the other chickens, trying to get a count and see if there were any other dead or injured chickens, when something made him look up. He actually saw the hawk flying away with one of our Cuckoo Marans! He said that the hawk actually landed on one of the power poles not too far away from where he was standing. He went to get a closer look to see if he could tell what kind of hawk it was, but it flew away and as it flew away, it actually dropped the chicken.  Ron went to examine that chicken and could see that the hawk had already took some bites off, glad that I didn't see that site! He left it there for a while and when he went back out it was gone. I like to think that our little chicken helped feed some baby hawks.

We still let them out daily, and we haven't lost any others to hawks. I think that now that they are full grown, they are too big for any of the hawks we have around to take them, but we have also accepted the possibility of loosing more. It's just one of the things that goes with having free-range chickens.


As for the dog who got one of the chickens, that was just us being careless and leaving a gate open when our friend came over. After the guilt that we all felt when we found that chicken, that won't happen again! Our own dog, Maya, is out with the chickens all the time. We taught Maya not to attack/play with the chicks when they were young and we have never had an issue with her going after the chickens. Maya is calm and very eager to please us; training her is extremely easy. These are the steps that we took with her to teach her not to "attack" the chickens, I do NOT suggest that this would work with all dogs. Every dog is different, and owners need to figure out whether they can be taught to stay away from the chickens or not.

We first introduced Maya to the chicks when they were little by taking her to their brooder and holding on to her collar. We took one of the chicks out and let her sniff it, but held on to Maya too so she stayed calm. Later, when the chicks got bigger and we would let them out in the yard, we let Maya out with them. The first time she got excited and ran at them, we told her "no!" and took her away from the area. I think we only had to do that two or three times and that's all it took for her to stop running at them. Now she is out with them all the time and never bothers them.