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In my case, nature is the primary selector. Either my free range birds live or they don’t. I have come in behind natural selection and then selected for traits I’ve wanted. Sometimes with no ill effect and other times with major negative effect. I’ve culled many otherwise healthy and rugged...

The kind of breeding I value is very much like creating and maintaining an heirloom variety of plant. Diverse genetics and hardiness seem to go hand in hand. I’m actually moving away from maintaining my pure Crackers as the various half-breeds I’m making seem superior both as survivors and for...

I started a thread here: https://www.backyardchickens.com/threads/easy-cultivation-of-black-soldier-fly-larvae.1538504/ I don’t know that my brooder setup is as important as what I use for bait. The BSF love them some nasty chick-poop-feed sludge.

@ Weather is about to get bad here. If weather permits I’ll take pics of my setup this evening and show step by step how I lure them in and maintain them. Its easy, something I learned in childhood.

I grow black soldier fly maggots under the feet of artificially incubated chicks in an off-the-ground brooder. Every few weeks I add inches of leaf litter to the brooder and once in a while I wet the substrate. About 4-6 inches down under the chicks is a writhing layer of maggots and compost...

In my survival flock I value the old hens because they lay bigger eggs and have the world-wise experience. They make for being better mommas and raising stronger chicks. And they’ve generally passed the test of time. So I do not cull for age alone. I offset the lower egg numbers an individual...

I agree that what is possible depends on what’s available and practical for a keeper’s circumstances. What I push back against is the deeply ingrained notion that it “can’t” be done in the manner I advocate. Yes it can be done and done well. It depends on whether a person sees the need to do it...

I don’t use a t-piece but I bet it works better than my straight poll.

I agree its of limited application to urban settings, but I don’t believe its unrealistic at all for people on rural acreage. I don’t have first hand experience outside of the deep South, but I do know throughout the Southeast it was normal to free range gamefowl on farms smaller than 10 acres...

Harvesting of eggs on my farm is accomplished by nailing nest boxes about chest high under open sheds and on fence posts around the farm. The game hens prefer the scattered nest boxes. I harvest meat by either shooting the birds during the daytime with a high powered pellet gun or by catching...

But what does it mean to thrive in specific relation to chickens? Humans living hand-to-mouth may be having a less-than-happy life depending on the circumstances, culture, and wishes and personality of the individuals. If we take the human analogy to the next step, fat coop chickens would be the...

Its not magical thinking. Its the norm of how many in the third world still raise their chickens and was the norm in much of the US with how they raised their gamefowl. Do you think it is a myth that bankivoid gamefowl and derivative mixes mostly or entirely take care of themselves in free range...

There seems to be a false dichotomy in the internet chicken and homesteading communities that says the choices are either wild junglefowl which are untamable and lay 20 eggs a year or fat production layers that provide 300 eggs a year but need a Fort Knox coop and commercial feed. There are...

Mine eat lizards, frogs, toads (not sure how given that toads are poisonous, mice, snakes, and whatever else they find. Now I live in the deep woods and the argument can be made that perhaps I have a special wild habitat that allows them to find all they need. Yet within 20 minutes of me is a...

Yet I added a very important caveat in my post. Wild turkeys are roamers. Red junglefowl are not. In the wild Red Junglefowl may spend their entire adult lives within a few hundred yards. That’s why chickens are so good at staying in a barnyard. Its not because the instinct to roam was bred out...

I agree that the habitat has to be correct, just as you can’t expect for a cow to be self sustaining in an urban back yard. I don’t think the bar is particularly high though. It doesn’t have to be a carefully planted field of the various ingredients found in commercial poultry food. It simply...

Do they though?

My layers make more and better eggs free ranging with only a few handfuls of feed than being in a coop eating all the feed they want. Good free range habitat is superior to commercial feed in my opinion.