Letting Backyard Chickens Free-Range Unsupervised
My experiments are going better than I expected
I’ve had backyard chickens for about two years now at my home in the Bay Area. Chicken keeping surged in popularity during the pandemic, and it feels like half the people in the Bay Area have chickens. At night, my chickens live in a 50 square foot shed beside my house. It’s nice and secure, which is important since I live in a semi-rural area with plenty of chicken predators like coyotes, raccoons and foxes.
During the day, I had been letting my chickens out into day coops in my backyard. They’d scratch around in the day coops, hang out in the sun, and then go back into their shed at night. Sometimes I’d let them roam around the yard, but I’d usually watch them while they did so. They always seemed to love free-ranging, but it was kind of a challenge to keep an eye on them all the time.
Unsupervised Free-Ranging
Recently, one of my chickens escaped, and I spent about an hour tracking her down. Reading up about chicken escapees online, I learned that when a chicken escapes, it’s often best to just let them wander. They have a natural instinct to return to their coop in the evening, and you’ll generally find them back by the coop door when the sun goes down, waiting to be let back in.
That got me wondering: what would happen if I just let my chickens wander in my fenced yard all day? Would they have a great time, and then come home in the evening to go back into their secure shed? In the backyard chicken world, this is known as unsupervised free-ranging. I decided to give it a try.