Should You Free Range Chickens on Your Homestead?

Deciding what to do with your flock is a personal decision. You might consider free-range chickens, pasture-raised chickens, or even cage-raised chickens. The goal of this post is to teach you about the advantages and disadvantages of each style of raising chickens so that you can make the best decision for your flock and homestead.

When you’re trying to figure out how you’d like to raise your flock of chickens, there are quite a few things to consider. Perhaps you’d like free range chickens. Or maybe cage-raised or pasture-raised would suit your homestead’s needs more beneficially. Let’s dive into each of these options and see which one would be the best fit for you.

What’s the difference between cage-free, pasture-raised, and free range chickens?

This is a great question. A lot of people are really going crazy for “free range chicken eggs” right now, and they’re willing to pay a hefty price to get their hands on them. I think when we think of free range chickens, we imagine happy hens pecking away in a green grassy field. However, with many things in the food industry, I think you’ll find that there are some blindspots and loopholes that you may not know about.

What does it mean to be free range?

The USDA defines free range eggs as eggs that are “produced by hens housed in a building, room, or area that allows for unlimited access to food, water, and continuous access to the outdoors during their laying cycle”. This might mean that their outdoor time is spent on a concrete slab in a cage. It might also mean that the hen never went outside, just that she had the option to go outside. This is a huge part of the reason why you should know where your eggs come from! Being outside on a concrete slab all day isn’t going to give the hen the same health benefits as being outside in a grassy pasture all day would do. More on that later.

Pasture Raised vs Free Range

Speaking of pasture, let’s talk about what it means to be pasture raised. Eggs that are labeled as pasture raised mean that the chickens have been given the opportunity to be out in a pasture. Again, there are some blind spots with this. If they’re not also labeled as “certified humane”, then there’s a chance that they were crammed together in a tiny pen out in a pasture. The certified humane label means that they were given at least 108 square feet to roam. That could mean that they were in a cage and given that amount of space.

Cage Free

Cage free chickens may be free range chickens, and they may also be pasture raised chickens. According to the USDA, cage free hens are simply hens that don’t live in cages. Hens may be crowded together in a small barn area; cage free doesn’t mean that they can’t be crowded. In order to be certified humane, a cage free hen needs to have 1.5 square feet per bird within the facility.

Know your farmer

Did you know all of this already? The food industry generally is looking to sell people product without showing much care for the animal or the consumer. The main goal for them is to generate income. I’m guessing many farmers use these blind spots and broad definitions to their advantage to be able to have the label they want. The best way to make sure your eggs are being raised the way you want them to be raised is to visit the farm that they’re coming from. If it’s a large corporation, consider purchasing local instead. Chances are a small town farmer cares a lot more about their animals, their reputation, and their consumers than a large-scale farmer far away from here.

Now that you know the difference, let’s focus in on free range chickens.

If you’re planning on free ranging your chickens, odds are you’re not planning on doing it the same way that the USDA has defined free range. You probably want your chickens to be out foraging somewhere. How you end up free ranging can be up to you. There are several different methods that people often use when free ranging their birds.

Supervised Free Range

Many farmers who use supervised free ranging for their birds will let their birds out only when they are out in the yard with them. That means that the chickens are always under supervision of someone. When there isn’t supervision available, the chickens would be in a coop or chicken run. Doing this style of raising chickens helps to prevent loss through predators.

We did this when we first got our chickens. We would leave for work during the day, so to make sure that they were safe, we kept them in their chicken run all day. When we got home, we would let them out so that they could forage and frolic happily for a bit of their day under our supervision and protection.

Chicken Tractors and Fences

Chicken tractors are a type of moveable cage. This gives the chickens new grass and bugs each day to forage. How can a cage be free range, you ask? Well, if we go by the definition above, it definitely can mean that they are in a cage! Chickens need to have adequate space to forage and move freely for this to be healthy for the chicken. Let your chickens “free range” in the space that you’ve provided for them.

It is a goal of mine to actually fence in our chickens this year rather than have them be complete free rangers. I have a few reasons for this, but my primary one is because I want to fence them into an area that the cows were just grazing so that they can eat spread out the manure and eat the fly larvae. This will allow us to use our chickens for an even more functional purpose here on our homestead.

Complete Free Range

These birds are out and about whenever and wherever they please. They leave the coop in the morning to go wherever they’d like, and then they return to the coop at dusk to sleep.

This is what we’ve done for a quite while here on our homestead. We let our chickens come out in the morning around daybreak, and we close the door to keep them safe at night after dusk. There are definitely some dangers and disadvantages to this method, but there are also some advantages too.

Advantages of Complete Free Range Chickens

Chickens eat less chicken food.

When chickens are out foraging, they are eating what they find all day. This means that they’re not coming back to the coop to eat all the time, so food stretches a bit further. Of course, if they’re free ranging on a concrete slab, this isn’t going to be the case. Where they are free ranging plays a role in this particular advantage.

They’re fun to watch.

There’s something nostalgic about watching a flock of chickens peck away in a yard, isn’t there? It’s special and beautiful, and it’s fun to watch them do their thing.

There is room for separation.

We have 3 roosters in our flock of about 20 hens. Sometimes they’re not all besties. Allowing chickens to free range and go wherever they want allows the roosters to separate and take a few hens with them so that everyone’s happy and not fighting.

Chickens eat pests.

If chickens are free-ranging your yard, they’re eating wood ticks, fly larvae, and other annoying pests that might be hiding out waiting to bother you. While they aren’t going to be able to keep the population of these pests down completely, they will lessen the population.

Disadvantages of complete free range chickens:

They poop EVERYWHERE.

If you’re someone who likes to go barefoot, be prepared to get a big chicken poop squish between your toes. And chicken poop stinks. Really bad. Which also means you don’t want it on your shoes, either. Be forewarned- you will have to worry about constantly stepping in chicken poop if your birds are free to go where they’d like to go.

They dig.

Chickens like to scratch and make dust baths for themselves. Dust baths are really important to their health, as it helps to keep down mites, lice, or other parasites that might bother them. I’ve found that they really like to dig and scratch out places for these dust baths in places that you don’t want them (like flower beds).

They lay their eggs in random places.

If a chicken is out roaming around, she might find a better place to lay her egg than the nesting box that you’ve prepared for her. That means you have to go on an Easter egg hunt everyday trying to find the eggs. Then, when you do find a hidden nest, you’ll have to make sure they’re still good to use. Ahh…the joys.

Roosters can be rude.

If you have a rooster who is protective of his flock, he might be aggressive towards you or your guests. I have many mean rooster stories…. But, we’ll save those for another time. For now, just know that your guests probably don’t want to be chased by your rooster and neither does the UPS man. You might end up with friends who don’t want to visit anymore.

There are dangers.

Chickens that are out on their own are at a higher risk than those in a cage, for obvious reasons. Predators will survey your area and look for weak spots or ways to catch your hens. Without a cage for protection, chickens are at risk. You can help lower the risk by keeping a rooster with your hens. He will do everything he can to alert when there is danger and even give up his own life to save his girls. Just make sure he’s people friendly.

You have less control over what they’re eating.

Chickens that are out on their own all of the time are pretty intuitive about what they can and cannot eat (unlike cows). However, every once and a while you might find that a chicken gets sick after eating something that they shouldn’t. We lost a hen this summer that we think ate some plastic and metal shavings from our house build. This is a risk to consider when you send your chickens out to roam and forage.

Tips for starting with complete free ranging

When you start out letting your chickens go freely, there are a few things to take into consideration.

• At the beginning, they may not go very far from the coop. However, with time, they’ll build up courage. You’ll find them wandering and exploring further than you may like them to. Keep an eye on them and bring them back home if they start to go further than you’d like.
• They may need help finding their coop again in the evening. After a long day of exploring, they might just decide to go to sleep in a tree or in the grass. This is not safe for them, and you’ll need to help them return to their coop for the night.
• Let them out a little after dawn and lock them up at dusk. This helps to make sure that they are safe from predators who might be hunting during those transitional hours, like owls, foxes, and coyotes.

So, have you made your choice?

How are you going to raise your flock of chickens? It really is up to you. If done in a way that focuses on the health of the bird, you’re going to be getting good, healthy eggs from good, healthy chickens. Do you raise chickens? How do you raise them? Let us know in the comments below!

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Looking for more?

• Check out this post on the Top 5 Best Chicken Breeds for Egg Production
• Read more about how you can start your own homestead