I don't know about the age thing since I don't have any chickens.

My ducks walk around our 3 acre yard all day and at night they always come back to their little pen (that I leave open) and get in their house. I think your chickens would come back to their pen/bran/house everytime they got ready to go to bed. Just watch them and see what happens.

Exactly what gennym said...

You do need to be there to close them up at dusk if they free range, though, or run the risk of predators getting at them--chickens sleep very soundly and have poor night vision.

Mine all go to the coop on their own, but then the coop is the most desirable roost. I have several youngsters right now that are being rebellious and trying to roost in the nectarine tree, where we have to shoo them out and into the coop at night. They'll learn, though. :)

Velvet ~:>

At three months old they are large enough to be allowed to free range. Ours are let out in the early morning and they come home to roost at dusk. We then lock them in for the night. Their nest boxes are in their hoop houses and they started using/laying eggs in them at about four months. Right now we have 20 hens and three roos that free range.

We have another 50 pullets that are two months old and still in a enclosed yard protected by a electric mesh fence. They will join the others in another month.

With free-ranging, you won't have a smelly coop to deal with and it sure is easier on your grass!

Well, I let the girls and boys out last evening and they had themselves a ball. I let them out around 6pm and it gets dark here around 8pm now... By 7:30 all but four were in when all of a sudden there was a red fox peeking around the corner of the back of the coop!! I chased him off but he didn't want to go plus he hung out in the perimeter of the field and was still there when I went check on the hens. I guess that ends the girls free range time.

Does anyone here have fox trouble? What do you do about it?

We haven't had a fox problem yet although we see them around the area. We have had problems with feral cats and racoons however. We "relocated" those and have to be ever vigil watching for the next predator.

Unfortunately, the way we know we have a predator is that a chicken is killed. I hate that, but wouldn't care to have chickens if they couldn't free-range. At least they die with tiny smiles on their faces.

At least mine have a nice extra large yard that's fenced in. I will let them out again but I can't just let them go when I know there is a fox laying in wait. I suppose I should expect some losses but it's hard to think about.

We have foxes and coyotes around here that live in the woods. but,we have a fenced in yard and none have ever tried to bother the ducks. We have problems with opossums trying to get the eggs. But, atleast the eggs aren't going to hatch anyway. We had a snake or two get in the fence last year, but they never hurt the ducks...just tried to get the eggs...

We have about 30 free range chickens, 10 ducks and 9 guineas. There are coyotes, foxes, raccoons, possum, etc. in abundance and we occasionally lose a member of our little family but those incidents are relatively infrequent now that we have two wonderful great pyrenees watching over the "troops".

There was a considerable loss with only one dog but the second night after we added the second one they brought in the body of a red fox. Things are much safer here now.8)

I always had my pastured hans in a 1/2 acre fenced in area so as to keep the predators away from them but also so they would not go and eat the market gardxen, sratch the flowers to death and dig up all bulbs I planted. 5 chickens can destroy 100 pounds of tomatoes in about 5 minutes. not to mention the birds that would get on the road and get killed by cars (and we used to live on a road with no more than 15 cars a day on it and they still got killed, mainly by the UPS driver)

For predators make sure you have a solid coop-coops made from chicken wire and thin plywood are quite easy for predators to get into. Make the coop out more substantial mnaterials.

Get a dog and train it to guard the chickens, not kill them. I have a great mixed breed who will not harm the chickens but kills anything that will try to harm them.

The only chickens of ours that distroy everything green in sight are the ones that are fenced in (a very large protected area). Because they can't truly free range, they have completely destroyed the whole area in a very short time-span. They will be confined for another four weeks until they are old enough to join the flock, but we are going to move their fencing.

The others free-range through the market garden and all through my daylilies and perennials. The only damage they do is occasionally in a newly transplanted bed. I purposely plant certain herbs for them like Comfrey because of the vitamins and they just love it. I find they are a great help in the gardens with their bug eating, scratching and fertilizing. We aren't near a busy road so that isn't a problem. When I want them to "work up" a new area for planting, I just throw some scratch there and they go to work!

They do love tomatoes at this time of the year but get plenty in my compost heap from ones that are bruised and the trimmings from my canning projects.

I'm thinking you have four choices:
1) Keep the chickens locked up all the time.
2) Get a good guard dog like judyag44 suggested.
3) Let em out anyway and hope the fox will move on (plan for dead chickens this way)
4) Get rid of the fox.

Judy, how long did it take your GP dogs to get use to your ducks and chickens where you could trust them alone toogether?

Genny,
When we brought each new dog home we put it on a leash and walked it all around the yard/barn lot and introduced it to all the animals. I told them that they needed to know that these animals were our family and that they must take care of them. I repeated that process three times, the evening that we brought each of them home, the next morning and the following evening. Neither of them appeared to have any inclination to be aggressive with the animals so we then turned them loose. They each went for a long run around the farm when we first took the leash off and were back and ready to "go to work" within a couple of hours. Have never had any sense that they were the least interested in pursuing any of my chickens or ducks. Since the guineas range the farthest(covering an area of about thirty acres) from the yard they call for the most watching over.

One day we were in our front yard, overlooking a pasture out front that slopes off to a little spring-fed branch lined with trees and bushes. Moses, our 2 year old Pyr, suddenly began barking furiously and ran from the yard down through the pasture toward "his" guineas who were roaming about 20 feet out from the branch. He ran directly toward the group of guineas and ran them off into the bushes, then, whirled to look toward the sky. Only then did we realize what all the fuss was about.....a large red-tailed hawk was quietly circling high up overhead! Had no idea the bird was there and had no idea that Moses watched the sky as well as the ground. Have been amazed at how well the Pyrs do in protecting our group.

We got both of our dogs from a wonderful lady near Springfield, Missouri who specializes in Great Pyrenees rescue. Moses was about 18 months old when we brought him home and had been bought by a woman who lived in an apartment in St. Louis. It was obvious from the packet of materials that we got with him that shedding of hair was something that she was trying to cope with.....and he had been shaved! Sassy was about four when we brought her home and had been at the rescue for several months while she regained some weight. Someone had bred her and allowed her to have a litter of puppies when the rescue was contacted. She weighed only 45 lbs and all but two of the puppies had died by the time the rescue lady got to her. The two remaining puppies died, too. She had put on 20 lbs and had been spayed before we brought her home. They are both wonderful dogs and I hope that if you decide to go that route you will be as fortunate as we were.

Very best of luck,
Judy

Judy, are your Prys fenced in? I would love to have two, but don't want fences. Can they be trained to stay in our 58 acres? Also, can you tell me who to contact near Ill/Iowa for Pry rescue?

We used Premier's poultry netting around their field paddock and that kept the 4 legged predators out. Owls are a different matter. Tom

We live on an old farm of a bit over 200 acres so the Pyrs are on the farm "most of the time" but do go on what I call "walk-about" from time to time....especially during hunting season when some of our "sporting friends" choose to kill deer and only take parts of the carcass. One year someone just killed the deer for its head and the dogs brought it, piece at a time to our yard. 8( We have a huge (several thousand acre) National Forest area just across from our front gate. Last year we leashed the dogs during the hunting season and may repeat this year.

I am not familiar with the Ill. nor Iowa rescue folks but just Google Illinois or Iowa Great Pyrenees Rescue and you will certainly get some contact information. Often, rescues have dogs that need homes on the Petfinder site, too. Have seen one that insists that their dogs only go to homes with "fenced yards" and find that laughable as Great Pyrenees were bred as livestock guardians. To put them in no more than a "fenced yard" seems tantamount to abuse to me.

Sagit, I lost two female ducks (a Cuyuga and a Rouen) to owls in the deep of winter last year. The Pyrs nearly got the owl on its second foray. I was awakened to chaos in the yard a bit after midnight. The ducks were carrying on and he Pyrs were like a couple of whirling dervishes. There lay the body of my pretty little black duck, just pierced but very dead. Guess the dogs got very close or the owl would never have given up his dinner.

Now everyone except nine of our guineas are locked up at night. Those old-timer guineas insist on roosting in a huge old cedar tree about thirty feet from our back door.
Ordinarily, everyone returns to their pens/coops except our four drakes who insist they need someone to walk behind them to their pen at dusk. We put a 6x10 chainlink enclosre up for them with a nice wooden dog house for shelter and heavy netting over the top.

Really gives me a lot of satisfaction to securely close the doors on all our "kids" at dusk. 8)

Hey,
We let our chicken out in the morning and they o back in at night. We started by putting food in there cage so they new were it was.. Good luck!!

We did try the free ranging for months and most of the time they all returned at dusk. One of our coldest nights, recently, we were missing four hens just after dark. We took flash lights and went looking for them. We found one in the shop, one in a corner of another building, and two in the storage shed. They had gotten separated from the group and couldn't find their way back. We picked them up and returned them all to the coop before securing it for the night. They were so thrilled to be returned home. They got excited and flew in the door when we got near. We only found them because we were calling them and they talked to us. Otherwise we would not have found the two in the storage shed, roosting together under a pile of cardboard. It got to -20 that night. The one outside in the corner and the one in the shop would have frozen.

So, we have stopped the free ranging in the evenings. They have a large pen with lots of room, roosts and toys where they are safe through the day and cannot get lost. We shut them up in a fortress at night.

Some days they don't go out at all due to the weather. If it's sub zero F temps they stay shut indoors with the heat lamp on, but it's a very big insulated shed.

When it gets down to +12F the snow and ice becomes a very dry cold and sticks to the bottoms of their feet. Sometimes their feet get too painful to go back to their regular roost so they will find anywhere they can get their feet off the snow and ice.

Perches for poultry should be 1/2 the length from their rear toe to the middle front toe. If their feet are 4" long the perch should be 2"wide-if using a square perch the corners should be rounded off. You can use an inexpensive wood rasp to easily round off the corners and for the ones that have routers you are probably familiar with the bit need to round off the corners. The reason the edges should be rounded is when any bird roosts (setting in the squatted position) the tendons in the bent legs lock the toes in a tight curled grip on the roost.

When in the wild they roost in trees and sometimes the wind would blow during the night and this adaptation kept them from falling off their perch when they were sleeping. If your corners are square it will have a tendency to cause foot problems.

If the perches are too big during cold weather the feet are not covered by feathers and can allow frost bit to set in. If too small the birds will have the tendency to tilt forward or backwards on the perch as they sleep. Then you will get grumpy birds because they didn't sleep will--NOT REALLY; but you can see that readjusting or even falling off during the night can be a bit stressful on them.

Ah! Maybe that's why they didn't go home, poor girls. At any rate, they won't be free ranging again for awhile as they have to be shut up in the spring planting season to keep them from destsroying the garden and eating the seeds. We are having sub zero F temps again this week so they won't be spending much time outside right now.