Opening the gate and letting your flock roam the yard is half the reason a lot of us keep chickens. They chase bugs, pick at greens and dust-bathe in the sun. They’re also out in the open, where anything with teeth or talons can see them.
I’ve kept 12 hens and one cranky rooster for 8 years, and I’ve lost birds to a raccoon. So I don’t treat free ranging as a cute lifestyle choice.
Free ranging can attract wildlife, and wild birds can carry disease, so some small flock advice says not to do it at all. I still let mine out. I just do it on a schedule, with a plan for each thing that wants to eat them.
Let Them Out After the Morning Lay, Lock Them In at Dusk
The routine for a laying flock is to let them out each morning and bring them back in at dusk. Just wait until most of your hens have laid, since eggs are typically laid in the morning hours. Turn them loose at first light and some of those eggs end up under a bush instead of in a nest box, and hidden eggs are eggs you can’t date.
Dusk is the hard line.
Raccoons and opossums hunt at night, and owls hunt in the early morning and late evening as well as after dark. Raccoons climb fences and find the smallest gap. They’ve been known to reach through wire, grab a bird and pull it up to the wire, and they can open simple latches. So lock your birds in a predator-proof coop every night. An enclosed space at night is essential. Every night, no exceptions.
Read next: When can chicks go outside? Feathers, night lows and predators
Hawks Hunt by Day, So Give Your Hens Cover
Give her somewhere to hide. Tall, leafy plants like millet or sorghum give birds cover from hawks and owls. A few low shrubs with good leaf cover do the same job.
Hawks and eagles take birds in the daytime, which makes them the free-range predator. And you can’t fight them. Eagles and hawks are federally protected under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, owls too, and harming them can bring a hefty fine or jail. So you make your yard a lousy place to hunt instead.
Over the run, string thin wire or fishing line so it’s hard for a hawk to fly in. A 3 to 4 foot grid of wire or twine over the pen gives excellent protection from flying predators. Out in the yard, cover is pretty much all you’ve got. Let them range near shrubs and garden edges, not out in the middle of the lawn. Just not right up against the woods, because predation goes up when birds roam without protection, especially near woods.
Your Rooster Is an Alarm, Not a Bodyguard
My rooster’s bad-tempered. Honestly, outside the coop that’s not the worst trait. His real job on a free-range day is noise. Roosters give one alarm call for ground predators and a different one for hawks overhead. When they hear the hawk alarm, hens run for cover and crouch, looking up.
That only helps if there’s cover to run to. And it does nothing about the predator most people don’t see coming. A dog.
Dogs are one of the most common poultry predators. They chase and maul, and they often leave the birds lying there, hurt or dead but not eaten. Most dogs don’t cause trouble unless they’re running in a pack.
Foxes are the patient ones. A fox may stake out a coop for days, and they’re worse in spring. Everything from bears to birds of prey loves domestic poultry, and once a predator finds an easy meal, it comes back. If you range inside a fence, electric poultry netting helps as long as you keep the charge up, and so does a strand of electric fence run about 4 inches off the ground, roughly a foot outside the main fence. Motion lights help a bit. And a guardian dog that isn’t trained properly can turn into a predator of your flock, which is kinda the opposite of the point.
The Yard Pays for It, So Rotate and Fence the Garden
Ranging gives your run a rest, but the yard turns into the same dirt if they’re always on one patch. Rotate range areas so overgrazing doesn’t leave you with dirt and mud. A chicken tractor helps too.
Keep them out of the garden beds, or seed beds, prize lawns and ornamentals will soon be reduced to one wonderful chicken dustbath. Then there’s the manure. A chicken makes about 4 oz of it a day, and it’s high in ammonia and burns plants. Fresh manure may also carry salmonella or E. coli, among other germs. The USDA organic standard calls for 120 days between raw manure and harvest for crops that touch the soil, and 90 days for everything else.
Bugs and greens are a bonus, not the whole diet. A 6-pound hen eats about 3 pounds of feed a week.
Getting them back in at night is mostly habit. Give them their treats inside the run near dusk, so walking in is their idea and not a chase around the yard. Keep the feed in a metal can with a lid, though, and keep feeders off the ground. Dropped feed and a messy yard near the coop can draw rats and wild birds, and wild birds are exactly what you want your flock kept away from.
Tossing them kitchen scraps or garden extras? The free Can Chickens Eat It checker tells you what’s safe, what’s fine in moderation and what never goes in the run.
Read next: To pen or not to pen: chicken pens vs runs
Sources: Virginia Department of Agriculture (VDACS); University of Minnesota Extension; NC State Extension; University of Maryland Extension (FS-1132); Penn State Extension; Animal Behaviour (1993); Washington State University, Skagit County Master Gardeners; USDA organic standard.
