Unfortunately, my hens are mostly no range. The free range chickens have about all been eaten by possums, raccoons, and foxes since the unfortunate demise of Ruby the Doberman, who would have the dead bodies of predators lined up on the porch on display when we arrived home. Just last night a rooster that formerly resided in the back yard on the grape arbor met an unfortunate demise. I discovered his headless body and stripped neck over by the fence, a possum victim (possums like to eat the heads and necks). No, I don’t know why they prefer the head and neck. They just do, okay? His dying squawk may have awakened me if I weren’t already awake suffering from a noro-type virus and, if I HAD heard his squawk for help and rescue, I wasn’t in any position to do anything about it.
Are my chickens cooped up in tiny cages and never get to see the outside? No. They have outdoor runs, although some of them are on runs of cement due to the wet, wet winter we’ve had. I figure being on cement is better than being belly deep in mud, but that’s just me. I also figure that they’d rather be on cement in a large pen than being allowed to roam freely during the day then ripped apart by wild animals at night, but maybe I’m getting all anthropomorphic. Most of them are in portable pens that get moved daily in the summer, weekly in the winter, but two separate populations are in stationary houses/pens for the winter for their protection from rising water and to give me a break from afternoon chores!
I suppose I could try to kill all the predators instead of confining my chickens, but that seems a little extreme to me.
A1A South 