Free range chickens, and free range eggs, are all the rage these days. Everyone (myself included) loves to imagine a flock of fat and healthy hens wandering around, aimlessly walking wherever their little hearts would like to go and eating all those nefarious garden bugs we’re so busy trying to get rid of. Or, in our case, ticks.
The ticks here in Tennessee are so bad that they’re the very reason why I started raising chicks at home in the first place. Sure I wanted fresh eggs, but what I wanted more was a yard where I could step out and work in the garden without coming home with 17 ticks crawling up my legs. Yes, they’re really that bad here. So, I use chickens to control ticks.
Here’s the thing. Letting your hens free range around your yard offers a few nice benefits. But there are also some major downsides to consider. And after a year of letting our flock free range, I’m ready to throw in the towel and pen them up for good.
The Downsides of Free Range Chickens
If you’re raising a new flock of chicks and are considering letting them free range in your yard, let me just give you a few reasons why you might want to rethink this approach.
1. Chickens Poop Everywhere
We’ll start with the most irritating factor first. Here it is in two words: chickens poop.
I’m currently writing this at our dining room table, which sits next to a sliding glass door that opens up to our front patio. One of our Speckled Sussexes, Big Momma, has just left a giant surprise for the next person who walks out the front door. We clean off these “treats” on a daily basis with water and a broom, but with 26 birds free ranging some days we just can’t keep up.
Free range chickens will poop everywhere around your home and yard. They’ll poop at your front door, on your deck, on your patio table, your deck chairs, your tractor, on any lawn equipment left outside, and all over your grass. This last point means that walking out into your yard without your farm boots on becomes a thing of the past.
And if you have children who abhor wearing shoes (such as mine) you’ll find that you spend an inordinate amount of time washing chicken poop off the bottom of their feet before they come back into the house.
The excessive poop is one thing, and obviously the more chickens you have the worse it will be. We currently have 26 hens walking around, pooping. I can’t do it.
The smell of that poop is another downside. We have cows on our homestead, and I have no problem with the smell of manure. However, chicken poop smells atrocious. And when you accidentally sit down on one of those little Hershey drops and it gets on your jeans, you’ll want to cry.
2. Chickens Will Do Serious Damage to Your Garden
Another major downside is that free range hens can and will do serious damage to your garden, especially in spring when delicate seedlings are coming up.
Already this spring my hens have uprooted my onion bulbs and dug into my potatoes. They’ve destroyed my Calendula and uprooted my kale. I have pots of seeds starting on my back deck in a feeble attempt to keep the chickens from killing the seedlings, but I’m constantly running the hens off with a broom or throwing various boots at them.
And when the growing season really sets in, your chickens will start feasting off all your hard work. You can buy the best feed, dole out the best chicken treats, and offer them a yard full of bugs for them to eat, and they’ll still be hellbent on devouring your cherry tomatoes or getting into your bell peppers. It’s maddening to say the least, especially when you’re raising food to feed your family.
3. Free Range Chickens Will Hide Their Eggs
Raise your hand if you have tons of extra time on your disposal and you won’t mind spending a lot of it looking for all your free range eggs. What, no hands?
Hens that are old enough to lay eggs and are allowed to free range might stop laying in the coop and find a more ideal spot. And, unless you want to offer free snacks to snakes or other predators, you’ll have to go out looking for those eggs.
We have found nesting spots underneath old fencing, in our lawnmower trailer, in an old trough in the abandoned red barn, under a rose bush, in an empty planter box, and on top of a tarp covering a pile of wood, to name a few. I have spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for nesting spots on our property, even though there are plenty of nesting boxes in our coop. The girls just like to do their own thing.
The point here is that if you have nothing else to do, it can be fun to go out looking for eggs everyday. However, I’m guessing that most of you have plenty to do, and spending precious time on a scavenger hunt isn’t really your idea of a good time. Not when you could be working in the garden, spending time with your kids, cooking dinner, or, let yourself imagine it… sitting down.
Another problem is chickens eating eggs. If your hens are free ranging it can be really hard to identify this bad habit and stop it before it spreads throughout the rest of the flock.
4. Chickens Will Scratch Up Your Yard
Free range chickens love scratching through the grass looking for food. And eventually, they will scratch enough grass away to make a sizeable patch of dirt so they can take a dust bath.
Dust baths are essential for hens because it helps them keep their feathers clean and mites at bay. However, unless you want several dusty patches around your yard you might want to rethink free ranging.
5. Not All Breeds Are Good Free Range
Some breeds make the best free range chickens because they’re excellent foragers, wary of predators, or have feathers that easily blend in with their surroundings. Some of the best free range chickens breeds include Amerauacanas, Golden Comets, brown Leghorns, Rhode Island Reds.
Other breeds are easily picked off by predators, can’t see well enough to spot trouble, or are lazy foragers. Some breeds that are unsuited to free ranging include White Leghorns, Silkies, Polish, Houdan, and Sultans.
The point here is that not all chickens are meant to free range.
The Benefits of Free Range Chickens
All that being said, there are some real benefits to free range chickens.
1. Hens Can Forage
Hens that are allowed to free range spend all day foraging for food. They eat grass, weeds, bugs, and seeds, and as a result their diet is healthy and varied.
Because they get so much food naturally, they eat less commercial feed. This reduces your monthly feed costs.
2. Hens Get More Exercise
Free range chickens spend most of the day wandering around looking for food. This means they get a lot of exercise and are less likely to be overweight.
Another benefit to all this exercise is that it keeps chickens from getting bored. And, bored chickens can start to bully and be aggressive towards their flock mates. However, when everyone is outside exploring this isn’t really a problem. There’s too much to do!
3. Hens Will Keep Bugs and Pests Down
If you have grasshoppers or Japanese beetles in your garden or ticks in your yard, these will be less of a problem if you let your chickens free range. Free range chickens will spend most of the day eating bugs and small reptiles, so if you don’t want these around then free range hens might be a good idea.
Last Word
For us, the honeymoon phase of free range chickens is over and done with. I seriously can’t imagine having a large flock like we’re about to have tearing apart my garden and pooping at my front door, especially since we recently added a rooster to our flock. So, to save our sanity, we’re going to have to build a fenced in run next to the coop this summer, ticks be darned.
Yes, I love seeing our hens wandering around and eating bugs and ticks. And I love that they get exercise and a varied diet. But. with the addition of 14 more birds this spring I’m not sure my patience can handle all that extra poop on the patio and deck.
I’d love to hear back from you. Are you a fan of free ranging chickens or do you keep your girls penned up?