How To Keep Free-Range Chickens and Locate Their Eggs
Free range chickens may seem like an easy and low-cost source of fresh eggs. The reality is they need protection from predators, supplements and fresh water. To produce eggs, chickens need a well-balanced diet that cannot be met on the range. Life-threatening dangers are everywhere and they include disease, neighborhood dogs, cats, and automobiles. Free range chickens will return to the same location to roost from dusk until dawn. If you provide a coop for roosting with laying boxes, your hens may lay their eggs there, making the eggs easy to find.
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Things You'll Need
- Coop (Protective shelter)
- Quality chicken (layer) feed
- Waterer
- Shovel
- Rake
- Bedding (straw, wood shavings)
Instructions
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Provide a shelter such as a chicken coop. Include roosting post, poles or branches. Hang chicken hutches or layer boxes inside and fill them with straw to encourage egg laying there.
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Fill a chicken feeder with a quality feed for laying hens. All the vitamins, minerals and protein they need can be found in a quality layer feed. Keep the feeder inside the coop. This will protect feed from weather conditions and encourage chickens to return to the coop.
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Install an automatic waterer to provide chickens with a continuous source of fresh water. Otherwise, on very hot days provide chickens with fresh cool water at least twice a day.
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Close chickens in the coop at night to protect them from night predators such as coyotes. Chickens will return to the coop at dusk on their own once you get them used to it.
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Shovel chicken manure and dirty bedding out of coop frequently to prevent disease. Rake any range areas that have excess manure.
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Check for eggs daily. First, look in the laying boxes or hutches. If your feeder has an open top, check inside the feeder. Look under the coop, under porches and in barns. Check areas of their range where grasses or flowers may hide a nest. Once a chicken chooses a place to lay her eggs she may return there daily.
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Tips & Warnings
Fill the sink with several inches of water and submerge the eggs you found. If they float throw them out. If they stand up on one end, they may not be as fresh as you would like.
On very hot evenings run an electric fan in your coop, chickens can perish quickly from excessive heat.
Keep chickens far from the road or put a fence between their free range and the road to prevent them from getting run over.
Do not bring adult birds from other flocks into your flock without testing them all first for highly contagious poultry diseases that could wipe out your entire flock.
References
- Oregon State University Extension Service: Backyard chickens becoming popular
- Organic and Alternative Livestock Production Systems at Purdue University: Organic, Pasture-raised and Free-range Poultry
- Colorado State University Extension: Raising Backyard Chickens
- University of Missouri Extension:Small Flock Series: Managing a Family Chicken
- Southern States: How desirable are free-range chickens?
Resources
- Photo Credit David De Lossy/Photodisc/Getty Images
