How can I protect my free

August 30th, 2010 |

I lose chickens here mostly to other people’s pets. We live in a rural farm area, but people just don’t care anymore or they forgot that pets need to stay at home where they belong.
Good fences make good neighbor type of thing.
Well, as advise to the free range chicken and loss due to predators, I would advise you to get you some guineas. Best watchdogs (almost) on the planet. They yell and yell when something is odd and unusual is around. They get along with chickens and can use the same night housing as you chickens.
Place solar motion detector lights on your chicken house to help keep the larger animals away like the coyotes that are BTW released into the wild every once in a while.

Please read up on their pullets before you order the birds. They have different needs than a chick. Examples: they need to be warmer, different feed requirements, they need rocks in their water (a little top heavy at 1st and need to rocks to keep them from drowning) and they need a mirror (So, they see more birds and are comforted by the ‘larger herd’ idea). Please keep in mind that they love to fly and they love having a flock family of their own kind. If you get adult birds – keep them caged until you think they have decided “this is home”, because adult birds are known to fly home from their ‘new home’. And one of the most important items to keep in mind is they imprint on you their human parent and expect to be talked to on a multi daily bases. They are known to watch ‘their human’ though windows and set outside watching you though your glass doors. Mine have a route of coming onto the porch and yelling though the sliding glass door until you talk to them and they see their ‘human’ though the glass.
The downside is you cannot touch their nest to collect their eggs or they will not return to that nest; use a long handled wooden spoon. And they do not lay in a nest box, they still make their nest on the grown in overgrown area