Free-ranging Chickens

When I was a child living outside of Rohrerstown in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, my dad brought home a few bantam hens and a bantam rooster. Bantams are small breeds of chickens with various colors and color patterns, making them attractive and interesting. The first spring I had those bantams, the hens all disappeared. I thought I would never see them again. But after a few weeks, they were back, each one trailing up to a dozen of the cutest, smallest chicks I ever saw. Each peep had dark fuzz with buff striping, two bright, dark eyes and stubby wings.

To this day, I like to see free-roaming groups of chickens in agricultural areas, but bantams and the taller, slim game chickens are my favorites, because of all the many breeds of chickens, they most closely resemble the red jungle fowl of southeastern Asia, the ancestor of all domestic chickens.

Red jungle fowl roosters have mostly bright-orange feathering with dark flight and tail feathers and red combs on top of their heads. Hens are light brown with darker markings, and have small combs. And red jungle fowl chicks are have dark and buff patterns on their fluff. Hens and chicks are better camouflaged than the flamboyant roosters.

Domestic roosters of all breeds crow like their wild ancestors. And both genders and their young have calls and habits, including scratching in fallen leaves and the soil for food, that are similar to their ancestors.

Some breeds of chickens, such as the white leghorns, are noted for producing abundant eggs. Other kinds are raised for meat, including Rhode Island reds and barred rocks. Years ago most chickens on small farms were free-ranging with several hens and one or a few roosters. They were kept for eggs and meat for the family. But then chickens for meat and eggs became big business. They were kept indoors, thousands to a building, in some cases each bird in its own small cage, for more efficient keeping. But those were not natural living conditions for the birds.

Today there is a demand from consumers to have eggs from free-ranging chickens available on the market. More farmers, therefore, are allowing chickens to roam free from mobile chicken houses in fields and pastures. Although a few birds may be lost to coyotes, red foxes and raccoons, free-roaming birds are cheaper and easier to feed because they forage for green plants, seeds and invertebrates on their own. Eggs and meat from those healthier, happier chickens are healthier for human consumers. And it’s enjoyable to see big flocks of chickens, both hens and roosters together, foraging across fields and pastures again.

Woohoo!

But I still enjoy best the groups of multi-colored, half-wild bantams and game chickens of different ages and both genders moving across barnyards, and through the fields like their relatives, the wild pheasants. When those birds feel they are being watched or threatened, they quietly slip into corn or hay fields to hide, just as pheasants do. And I like to see free-ranging bantams and game chicken hens with their broods of dark and buff chicks moving freely in the fields and barn yards. Those chickens are almost like wild pheasants, which adds to their beauty and appeal.

When riding through farmland, watch for free-ranging groups of chickens. They are as attractive in their human-made habitats as wildlife is.

Photo courtesy of Hunter Desportes